TNAG-1846-FCO40-2621-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1989 — Page 103

CONFIDENTIAL

Selection of first Chief Executive

5.

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THE ORIGINAL HAS BEEN CLOSED UNDER

FOI EXEMPTION NO. 27....

Mr Ian Taylor argued that HMG's primary interest was not to second guess other people as to what might happen in 2007 but to give the HKSAR the best possible start in 1997 by ensuring that its Chief Executive was deemed to be a genuine representative of Hong Kong rather than a Peking nominee. Had we done enough to wrestle with this problem? Mr Ivan Lawrence also took up this theme, asking whether the post of Chief Executive would be filled by competitive election and whether the only candidates would be those who had been

approved by Peking. Mr David Howell asked whether Chinese

resistance to selection of the Chief Executive by direct elections was really due to the technical difficulty of organising elections in Hong Kong before the transfer of sovereignty, as they claimed, or was rather due to political opposition from Hong Kong businessmen within the BLDC. Mr Bowen Wells suggested that the Chinese argument was illogical in view of their agreement to a through train for the Legislative Council.

6.

Mr McLaren explained that according to the provisions in Annex 1 of the Basic Law setting out the method for selection of the Chief Executive, candidates had to be nominated jointly by at least 100 members of the 800-strong Hong Kong Election Committee. This meant

that the Chinese would have to persuade a considerable number of the local Election Committee to support their candidate. It was true that the provisions in Annex 1 would probably command more support in Hong Kong if the arrangements for selecting the first Chief Executive could be brought into line with the arrangements for the second and third Chief Executives.

As regards Mr Howell's point, we were not aware of any strong resistance from the Hong Kong business community to

making the arrangements for the first Chief Executive the same as

for the second and third. The Chinese appeared to be genuinely concerned about the sovereignty implications. No doubt they also attached importance to ensuring that the first Chief Executive would

be someone who could work with Peking. Mr McLaren agreed there was

CONFIDENTIAL