TNAG-2452-FCO40-3569-Future-of-Hong-Kong-constitutional-development-1992 — Page 42

316

SAMAA umlocuplet

香港總督府

In

GOVERNMENT HOUSE

HONG KONG

води рас 230 Mr than sto Mr Marri's

Mals of fection.

An eloquent defence of the Gov's apprend wicht for

"

8 December 1992 Mer letter et

Do Reckett's, HKD

@

astro Goodled

22/12

Thank you for your letter of 25 November.

SuJ:cou

or Harm

I am grateful for your kind words about my meeting with the Tory peers last month, but am sorry that you are clearly unhappy about the proposals that I put forward in my address to the Legislative Council on 7 October.

You

You asked what the point of my proposals is, and suggested that in 1997 the Chinese can and probably will reverse overnight everything I have put in place. may be right in your assessment of what the Chinese will do. But I do not think that this will necessarily happen, or that the possibility that may happen should prevent us from trying to do what is right.

Let me explain. When I was appointed as Governor of Hong Kong, I inherited a situation in which the Hong Kong Government had to put forward proposals on how the 1995 elections should be conducted, and do this quickly, so that there was time to put the necessary legislative changes in place. As you say, there were strong pressures to increase democracy, both within Hong Kong and also in the UK and elsewhere in the West, in particular the United States. I did not, and do not, feel that it would have been very productive to have spent the five years of my Governorship resisting these pressures. Nor did I feel that it would be morally right to prevent the people of Hong Kong from participating more fully in the government of the territory. Perhaps most important of all, I thought it important to set democratic arrangements in place, to the extent possible, in order to give the systems and way of life that have made Hong Kong so successful the best chance of surviving after 1997.

брании

2

21

/...