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Chinese. Collective responsibility is also looking very threadbare (eg the CRC have taken a position on the airport railway at variance with HKG's policy). The options are therefore to add Liberals to ExCo, or
subtract the existing CRC politicians from it. The
Governor prefers the latter. We agree. Putting
Liberals on to ExCo would lead to a head-on collision with the Chinese and would lose any remaining sense of
cohesion in the Council. But if ExCo is not to be reduced simply to a Senior Committee of the Hong Kong Administration, the Governor will need to find some
credible community leaders from outside the political parties. Ideally, this should include one or two rising stars in the business community, who could use their position on ExCo to take a higher public profile in defending the Government's policies, and offering the international media an alternative Hong Kong
Chinese voice to that of Martin Lee.
(ii) The "hinge" between ExCo and LegCo. The Governor will
also need new channels for dealing with the leaders of
the main parties in LegCo, to build support for his
policies there and to give them an opportunity to influence policy at a formative stage. The telegram is unspecific on the details. We could explore the
Governor's thinking on this further at dinner. The
checklist sets out the main considerations. It is hard
to imagine that Martin Lee will be willing to cooperate
unless the Committee wields real influence: but if it
does, it could overshadow ExCo. There is also a
Chinese dimension (para 3 below) I have been trying to think of a constitutional parallel to the "hinge" idea.
It is rather like the regular meetings which the US
President had with leaders of the Senate and Congress but the Governor's concept is of a more formal committee. If there was a formalised dialogue between the European Parliament Enlarged Bureau, and the President of the Council of Ministers that would be comparable.
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