registered voter who was eligible to serve on the Legislative
Council would be eligible for election by the Election
Committee, provided he or she secured at least five nominations
by Election Committee members.
68. In the view of Her Majesty's Government and the Hong Kong
Government, this revised proposal, although less simple than the Governor's original proposal, would meet the essential
requirements by ensuring that the Election Committee would be
elected by people who had been elected fairly and openly in Hong Kong, through either the functional constituencies or the
District Boards, and that the elections inside the Election
Committee would take place in an open and fair manner.
Functional Constituencies
69.
The Hong Kong Government's 1988 White Paper defined
functional constituencies as representing economic and professional sectors of substantial importance in Hong Kong. Her Majesty's Government and the Hong Kong Government consider
that if the functional constituency system is to meet the requirements of fairness and openness, there are two lessons to
be learnt from recent experience. First, corporate voting can
lead to an individual having effective control over several
votes in functional constituencies. Second, the very small
electorates in some of the existing constituencies lead to a
risk of corruption, of which there has been a recent example in
Hong Kong. It is therefore necessary to provide for
constituencies of a substantial size.
70. The Governor's proposals in October 1992 took account of these points. He proposed that for the 21 existing functional constituencies, the process of gradual development should be
maintained by replacing all forms of corporate voting with
individual voters. For the nine new functional constituencies,
the Governor proposed that the simplest and fairest approach
statement26.8/BRIEFS/NJH
34
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.