TNAG-2450-FCO40-3567-Future-of-Hong-Kong-constitutional-development-1992 — Page 156

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40.

-18-

With additional responsibilities being given to

them, and with this Council being fully elected in 1995, I believe it would be hard to justify the continuation of As from 1994, I appointed membership to District Boards.

propose that all members should therefore be directly elected. We should similarly increase the number of directly elected seats on the two Municipal Councils, and while continuing to allow the District Boards and the Heung Yee Kuk to elect their existing number of representatives to these Councils, we should abolish the

appointed seats.

41.

These arrangements and those for the Legislative Council will involve a good deal of work in defining the boundaries for the new constituencies.

To ensure

fairness in this important task work, it would seem

sensible to set up an independent Boundary and Electoral Commission which will report direct to me.

42.

Let me emphasise:

these are proposals, not a

final programme. They will require hard work, plain talking and good will, here in Hong Kong, in London and in Peking. Some of the proposals will also need complex

administrative arrangements.

For example, registering

voters in the new functional constituencies based on

broad occupational groups of our working population will

be a formidable undertaking.

But I do not believe that

we can afford to be deterred by these challenges.

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