TNAG-2449-FCO40-3565-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1992 — Page 17

CONFIDENTIAL

Reference

election committee. Against this Frederick Fung has said he thinks that in the end they will vote for the Governor.

7. Hong Kong reported that Marvin Cheung and Eric Li were only persuaded to vote in favour of the Finance Committee motion by the Government's statement to the effect that HKG could not envisage any further progress on the airport without consultations with the Chinese. These are two further likely compromise votes. (Eric Li has been quoted in the press as saying that the Governor has not paid enough attention to the Basic Law.)

8.

Four more independents have made it fairly clear in public that they are in favour of a compromise solution. Vincent Cheng and Andrew Wong have both said that a compromise is the way out of the current impasse. Simon Ip has said that the Governor should adopt a softer attitude and "give some indication that he is prepared to repair the damage" that has been caused. was absent for the Finance Committee vote and abstained on Christine Loh's motion because of divided opinion within his banking constituency.

9.

David Li

This leaves five independents who all voted in favour both of Christine Loh's motion and of the Finance Committee motion: Timothy Ha, Cheung Man-Kwong, Michael Ho, Pang Chun-Hoi and Samuel Wong. It is always possible that they too would be tempted to vote for compromise amendments. (Samuel Wong was quoted as saying that his electors seemed to rank prosperity and stability higher than democracy.)

10. It therefore appears that 11 of the 16 independents are likely to consider voting for compromise amendments to the proposals for the functional constituencies and the election committee. If the ADPL tables moderate and sensible amendments this likelihood will be increased. If the anti-Governor bloc also voted for such amendments they could be passed by a margin of 33 to 26.

11. Obviously the above electoral arithmetic is crude and ill-informed: Hong Kong will have a vastly better idea of how opinion is moving on the ground in LegCo. But it was slightly disturbing to see it claimed by Hong Kong that the Governor has 32 solid votes behind him. This does not seem to be borne out by the facts as we see them. It would be good to see Hong Kong's analysis of opinion in LegCo and how they think the middle-ground will vote if amendments are put forward.

Jarathon Mashall

J'N Marshall

Hong Kong Department

WH 305 270 3287

10 December 1992

CODE 18-77

CONFIDENTIAL