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Zae suggested that elections through functional constituencies, direct district elections and an electoral college of district representatives should be implemented before 1997, whereas election through a grand electoral college be introduced in 1997 when the SAR government was set up. This was because a grand electoral college would only be set up in 1996 to elect the chief executive, he said.
Noting that the principle of a gradual approach for the development of the political system was agreed by both HK and mainland drafters, Zee said that a mechanism should be incoporated into the final package to make sure that this principle would be followed. He said that the best mechanism would be a review to be carried out by the legislative body. Any change should be passed by two third of the members and approved by the NPC Standing Committee.
On the nationality of members of the legislative body, Zee said chat views collected by him were mostly in favour of having only Chinese nationals sitting on the legislative body. However, he added, to take into account the special circumstances of the territory, consideration should be given to allowing members elected through a certain group of functional constituencies to be foreigners. Another alternative was to group all the foreign chambers of commerce into one functional constituency from which a member would be elected into the legislative body.
Frank Ching, in his regular column in the South China Morning Post and the HK Economic Journal, said that Fast Germany's decision to allow its people the free right to travel means that there now existed a situation very similar to one for which people in HK had argued in terms of the right of abode issue.
For years, London was told that if people in HK had the right to live in Britain, they would not go. Now, the people of East Germany all had the right to emigrate to West Germany. However, most were content to visit and return home.
Ching said the reason people were not leaving presumably was that they thought things were going to improve. If things got worse, they might want to exercise their right to go. "This is exactly what HK has heen asking for."
On the nationality package to be announced by the British Government, Ching said it was likely that China would respond negatively, especially if other countries followed suit. Also, he said, from a legal standpoint, China had a respectable case.
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