substantially expanding the electorate for the LegCo functional constituencies to cover the entire working population; lowering the voting age to 18; and ensuring that the members of the Election Committee, which will itself elect
10 members of LegCo, should themselves be elected. This did
not challenge the Chinese insistence that the Basic Law cannot
be changed before 1997 elections or the directly elected seats increased beyond the 20 set out in the Basic Law. The Chinese had also objected strongly to speculation that Mr Martin Lee might be appointed to the Executive Council (ExCo). This, again, did not happen.
Our strong support for the Governor's proposals has not changed. The Chinese criticism has had an unsettling effect in some quarters. But among the population as a whole the proposals continue to attract strong support about 2:1 according to the polls.
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by a ratio of
There has been some discussion about whether the Governor's
proposals are compatible with the Basic Law and the Joint Declaration. To set the record straight I am enclosing a brief summary of how the Governor's proposals fit with the relevant sections of both these documents. The exchange of letters I had with the Chinese Foreign Minister in 1990 did not result in an understanding between us on the 1995 elections. We placed the text of these and a commentary in the Library of the House when they were published last autumn.
We and the Governor have made it clear that his proposals were not set in concrete and that we were open to alternative ideas from the Chinese side as well as from people in Hong Kong. The Governor himself made this clear when he announced his
proposals. A range of alternative ideas has been put forward in Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong Government have produced a compendium of these for the benefit of members of the LegCo.
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