1989-03-23 13:53 G.1.S
33 P.26
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Have you given any thought to your duties as speaker of the Legislative and Executive Councils in preparing for 1997.... there certain provisions and procedures which we take for granted which are really fundamental
the exercise of democracy within OUT country for example the methods of reading bills in five different ways and not all in the same day. There are example in colonies of ours that have become independent where the abuse of parliament 3 rampant with the result that the population in general has no all what's going on in the legislature. and therefore no participate in the deliberations of the legislature. and whether you. in your capacity as speaker. have given any This. 20 build in the safeguards if necessary to Prevent that happening in Hong Kong.
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A have two separate roles at the moment two councils. in the Executive Council I am Chairman. Legislative Council I am President, and therefore in some way take The role of the Speaker in the Executive Council Chairmanship by Governor will go on right through to 1997 and the Chief Executive the SAR will be Chairman of his Executive Council. In the legislature,
we have given thought to this in a number of different ways was one of the subjects which we put up for consultation in the 1997 Green Paper exercise. One of the questions asked there was whethe people thought that the Governor should give way as President of the Legislative Council to an elected member of the council. interestingly enough. that was probably the question which got the clearest-cut. largest majority, answer and it was no and that's not by any means the end of the story because as a result of that we took the decision that the Governor should remain President of the Council for the moment. But the draft of the Basic Law. the present draft. lays down that the President of the Legislative Council after 1997 should be
elected out of the members of the Council itself. So, again if mirror-image at the latest by 1995 we would mirror-image that too. there will be that significant change taking place. The other very major change and it's
related to the point. is that at The moment We put our legislation. or most of it through
officials introducing it and then it is read three times in the normal way. The Basic Law. indeed the Joint Declaration. lays down the Legislative Council should be elected. So by definition there cannot be any officials appointed to it. The draft of the Basic Law provides For officials to be in attendance. Now. by 1995 at the latest, again if we mirror-image. we will have to devise ways by which we Can introduce legislation into our legislature. We'll have work out new doing it. Because quite clearly the present way in which He do won't work. So we have an immense amount of work to do on trying devise
new system on how we introduce and how we deal with legislation in our legislature. One last point, whether people in Hong Kong will or will not know what's going on. I feel sure that they will know what's. going on. We have open sessions of Our Legislative Council. they appear on television. they are all televised. The press attend them in force. They are very well reported. I 3e0 no reason at. all to believe that the people of Hong Kong will cease to take an
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