HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL - 1 March 1990
香港立法局 ——————————一九九0年三月一日
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to make our society more egalitarian for the elderly poor, the sick and the handicapped, people for whom we should hold a specially sacred trust.
We must make sure that we have true freedom of the press and other media which should be the mouthpiece of democracy. At the same time, the media should hold truth more valuable than sensation.
I have mentioned only one or two of the issues we must attend to in the years ahead if we are to make our society truly democratic by 1997. We must seek freedom, equality, economic prosperity, social security, and all these things are interdependent. Only by this means can we prove to China that democracy will succeed in the Special Administrative Region. Only by this means can we influence China far more than by harsh word, fist-raising and effigy-burning, activities which only serve to fuel public fear and uncertainty.
I therefore hope that our community will unite, stand firm, and have no more fear for the future.
I should like to support Mr. McGREGOR's motion, but I think it would be unrealistic to believe any longer that in 1995 Britain will step out of line with China's formula for convergence. I do not know what our Hong Kong democrats were doing in the past two or three decades, but after lobbying the British Government myself for democracy during those years I learned that the reply was always the same as I quote that "China would not like it", and Britain has not changed her story, even since the sad happenings of last year. She is never likely to do so, so we have to face the facts and learn to live with our frustrations.
In these circumstances, Sir, I must reluctantly support Mr. LEE's more realistic motion.
MR. PETER WONG: Sir, the time of arguing about the abstract draft Basic Law is about to pass. We have to face the reality that the National People's Congress will promulgate the Basic Law shortly and no amount of logical or succinct arguments on Hong Kong's part will make any changes to its, certainly not in the next few years.
Like my honourable colleagues, I am disappointed that we did not get everything that we have asked for, despite our genuine attempts to express what Hong Kong people feel and want. But this is not the first time that decisions that set the course of our future have been made without our participation. I
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