The Rt. Hon. Lord Shawcross G.B.E, Q.C. 60 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT LONDON EC4Y OJP 071-325 5133
2 -
If I may say so the Office lawyers who drafted your letter do not seem to have given sufficient consideration to the travaux preparatoires (of which I have only seen a small part, including the three notes attached) or to the necessity of interpretation in light of the general principles, spirit and purpose of the documents concerned. On their advice the Government may say they are "quite certain" that they are right in law. It requires bravery to be "quite certain" about the law but after a lengthy experience, looking at the matter as I would have done when - not without experience I was myself A.G. that the Government is mistaken in law.
I still think Your advisers should remember Pliny "Solum certum nihil esse certi.
-
I am
But my anxiety is not about the niceties of legal interpretation; much more concerned with the manner in which these proposals were presented. Here the Governor's very long speech reads as if the two years of hard and extremely successful work by ministers and Foreign Office officials had not taken place and as if he after a few months in an unfamiliar office was taking measures to guarantee the rule of law and an independent judiciary and that he was going to make possible "the widest democratic participation by the people of Hong Kong" etc etc, quite ignoring that these things were already guaranteed by the long and careful negotiations which led to the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law - both of which in almost every line bear the mark of English legal draughtsmanship. Governor gives lip service from time to time to "discussion" with
Certainly the the Chinese. But statements by one Foreign Minister to another during the busy meetings - e.g. in New York - of Foreign Ministers hardly amount to discussion. What ought to have happened in my view was the presentation of clear proposals to Beijing and confidential negotiation there with a view to amicable agreement. This was the course pursued with the Joint Declaration and there was no overriding reason why it should not have been equally successful with these new proposals. The unhappy mistake was to publicise them as what the Governor "intended" to do. rather like the Monarch's speech at the opening of the English
The whole speech tends to read Parliament the Governor being the Monarch and Government rolled into one, as indeed the Governor in effect was under the old regime, mainly conservative when nobody worried much about democracy. belated enthusiasm for democracy in Hong Kong is giving, I am afraid, a very political ring to the whole business.
-
Our
Please forgive my temerity in writing so long and argumentative a letter. I think it fairly represents the view of the mass of the business community in Hong Kong who are more enthusiastic about the future of their country than the 22% of the electorate who bothered to exercise their franchise in the last election. That electorate will bother even less about democracy if they find their now well- buttered bread is becoming scarce which, alas, could happen if the Chinese get on their high horse. And believe me I am not pro-Chinese; I have refused to go there since Tiananmen Square, although prior to that I had travelled extensively all over the country. But I do know how very sensitive they are.
Most
We work you Now you.
a highappy
cufirman a
شمس
Herken howro
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.