HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 28 February 1990
香港立法局 ———————————一九九0年二月二十八日
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meaningless if no political structure exists to safeguard them. If the Basic Law does not provide for the highly autonomous and democractic Hong Kong as promised to us in the Joint Declaration, then its provisions for freedom of speech and other fundamental rights will have the same value and will suffer the same fate as those in the Constitution of the People's Republic of China.
The difference between the OMELCO consensus model and the political model in the Basic Law is not, as some would like us to believe, a matter of quibbling over a few seats. Under the Basic Law, we will not be able to democratically elect so much as half of the Hong Kong legislature until 2003 13 years from now — and there is no guarantee that more than half of the legislature will ever be democratically elected thereafter.
The limitation on the numbers of democratically elected members and the establishment of a so-called "Election Committee", through which Beijing hopes to appoint its own representatives, are clear violations of the pledge in the Joint Declaration that the HKSAR legislature shall be constituted by elections. Similarly, China and Britain's agreement on a ceiling on the number of legislators with foreign right of abode is another clear breach of the Joint Declaration, which spells out in detail which key positions in the HKSAR must be held only by Chinese nationals. These specified positions do not include legislators; and there is no mention of the right of abode in the Joint Declaration at all.
The imposition of a divisive split-voting scheme in the Basic law relating to Private Members' Bills serves only to further undermine the influence of democratically elected legislators. The split-voting scheme, ill-conceived as it is, is really unnecessary given the other provisions in the Basic law, which render the legislature quite powerless vis-a-vis the Chief Executive.
The Joint Declaration promises that "the executive authorities shall be accountable to the legislature". But according to the Basic Law, the all- powerful Chief Executive will effectively be accountable to no one except the Beijing Government. Although the Chief Executive is supposed to be elected by the people of Hong Kong, the methods of election are such that it is obvious to all that he will be chosen by Beijing and can only be removed by Beijing.
The Chief Executive can prevent legislators from introducing virtually any Bill into the legislature, because his written consent is necessary for the introduction of any Bill "relating to government policies". If the legislature fails to pass any "important Bill," then the Chief Executive has the unilateral power to dissolve it.
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