33. The 1984 White Paper also considered the question of direct elections to the Legislative Council. The Hong Kong Government noted that although there was strong public support for the idea of direct elections, there was little support for such elections in the immediate future. They undertook to hold a review in 1987, before
the 1988 elections, to give an opportunity for further consultation about the development of representative government, including specifically the introduction of direct elections.
34. The review duly took place in 1987. The options were set out in a Green Paper "The 1987 Review of Developments in Representative Government" published in May that year. It covered many aspects of representative government, among them the question of whether, and if so when, there should be a directly elected element in the Legislative Council. A Survey Office was set up to collect and report on public opinion on the Green Paper. It operated outside the ordinary machinery of government and without interference from the administration. Two independent monitors were appointed to oversee its work and to ensure that the office carried out its duties in a fair and objective way. The Review generated considerable public interest. The sounding of public opinion took many forms and did not rely solely on the results of individual
polls or surveys, though a number were held and their results taken
into account. Care was taken to obtain a representative overall picture.
35.
The Review and the findings of the Survey Office showed that public opinion was in favour of introducing a directly elected
element into the Legislative Council before 1997, but was sharply divided on the timing of this change. Some people favoured the introduction of directly elected members in 1988, arguing that direct elections would promote the development of more open, accountable and representative government, and should therefore be introduced as early as possible. Others argued that it was too soon to take such a step in 1988, only three years after the last major constitutional change when indirect elections to the Legislative Council were introduced, or because the system of elections to be used after 1997 had not yet been established in the Basic Law due to
be promulgated in 1990. The fact that it was widely believed that
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