TNAG-2714-FCO40-3920-House-of-Commons-Select-Committee-on-Foreign-Affairs-enquiry-1993 — Page 186

THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

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3.10 above), and this would mean in effect at the 1995 election, we consider that at the preceding election, in 1991, 50 per cent of the members of the Legislative Council should be directly elected as the first stage of this process.

3.15. The present proposals for the 1991 Legislative Council envisage a total of 56 members plus the Governor as President, made up as follows: three ex officio (the Chief Secretary, the Financial Secretary and the Attorney General), seven officials, 20 appointed members, 14 members from functional constituencies, one each from the Urban Council and the Regional Council, and 10 directly elected. We suggest that in 1991 there should be at most 10 appointed members; also the number of officials should be reduced to a maximum of three (we hope this would encourage the Hong Kong Government to use unofficial members of LegCo to speak Jon its behalf, as it will have to in 1995). We would retain a maximum of 14 functional constituencies, but abolish the two seats for the Urban and Regional Councils. Finally, we would introduce not 10 but 30 directly elected members. Under these proposals the Legislative Council would have 60 members, plus the Governor as President, of whom 30, or 50 per cent, were directly elected. In effect we propose for 1991 a Legislative Council very similar to that proposed for 1995 by OMELCO on 24 May 1989.

3

3.16. Under our proposal the Governor remains in 1991 as President of the Legislative Council. Since under the terms of the Joint Declaration he would not retain this position after 1997, we would suggest that he withdraw from the position of President of the Council and from the Council itself between 1991 and 1995 in order that he should be replaced by an unofficial member of the Legislative Council elected by the Members of the Council. Thus in 1995 there would be 60 members of the Legislative Council, and for the elections of that year, the up to 30 appointed and official members would be replaced by directly elected members.

3.17. When we discussed the development of representative government with OMELCO leaders after the recent events in China, they maintained that the majority view in OMELCO would still be to abide by their timetable of 24 May. They admitted that they had not concentrated on this issue since the weekend of 3-4 June; but they felt that it was of crucial importance to maintain stability in Hong Kong up to 1997, and that the possible unsettling effects of full direct elections should be postponed until after the transfer of sovereignty when direct elections could also be introduced more gradually. We have considerable respect for their views but on balance we believe that it is necessary to entrench democracy before 1997. Any risks associated with the early introduction of democracy are far outweighed, in our view, by the damage to confidence and the dangers of instability which would be caused by postponing the introduction until a time when Hong Kong is under the sovereignty of the People's Republic, particularly now that their response to their own people's calls for democ- racy has been so horrifically demonstrated.

The Chief Executive

3.18. On 30 May OMELCO came to a unanimous view that the Chief Executive should be elected by universal suffrage no later than 2003, the date at which OMELCO also agreed that all members of the Legislative Council should be directly elected. Mr Kevin Lau, of Hong Kong Link argued in evidence to the Committee that "democracy is a whole package. If the legislature is going in the direction of direct elections and full democracy, the Chief Executive must be equally representative”.' We accept that the objective must be direct election of the Chief Executive. The Joint Declaration states that he "shall be selected by election or through consultations held locally"." We do not believe that the emergence of the first Chief Executive by a process of consultation is any longer acceptable, if ever it was. Neither do we believe that he should be elected by the Legislative Council, despite the fact that that body will, by our proposal, be itself directly elected in 1995. We accept Miss Maria Tam's argument that there should be a separation of powers between the legislature and the executive.3 We believe that universal suffrage for such an election would not be practicable in 1997 and could also risk confrontation with the People's Republic. It is essential that the first Chief Executive be acceptable to Beijing. We therefore believe that the first Chief Executive should be elected by means of an electoral college. Like OMELCO we believe that this electoral college should itself be democratically constituted and should therefore resemble that proposed for the second and third Chief Executives in the second draft of the Basic Law. We believe also that the first

'Q 774.

* Annex 1, Section I.

* Q 516.