SECRET
мно
011/08
Y
157320
MOHIAN 9426
SECRET
FM HONG KONG
TO DESKBY 18090OZ FCO
TELNO 1624
OF 180212Z OCTOBER 1993
INFO DESKBY 1808OOZ PEKING
INFO IMMEDIATE UKREP JLG HONG KONG
Your telno 903 Boundary and Election Commission (BEC)
:
Re. para. 2 of TUR, our assessment is that bringing the remaining parts of the BEC ordinance into operation will be favourably received locally. Indeed, given the strong public support for the establishment of the BEC, we could well be criticised if, three months after its establishment, the BEC was
It still denied the responsibility for organising a by-election. would be extremely difficult to come up with convincing arguments against such criticisms.
2.
The work of the BEC in organising elections/by-elections will all be technical and operational : it will merely make preparations in accordance with existing legislative provisions, and will not/not make policy decisions. Its work certainly will not impinge on any of the issues which we are currently discussing with the Chinese. So there is no question of the BEC's activities pre- judging the outcome of the talks in any way. (By contrast, the BEC cannot prepare recommendations on Municipal Council (MC) constituency boundaries until there is a decision on the number of
Hence elected MC seats, which is one of the issues in the talks. our decision to put back the deadline for the BEC to submit its recommendations.)
3. If the Chinese were to make noises of the sort you envisage, we can deploy the points in para. 2 above : these are points which the public will understand and accept.
PATTEN
YYYY
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