TNAG-2719-FCO40-3925-Hong-Kong-electoral-provisions-and-arrangements-1993 — Page 155

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we need to know the voting age for both DB and LegCo elections before the voter register for the District Board (DB) and Municipal Council (MC) elections can be drawn up.

You could hardly have one voting age for the DB election and another for LegCo

particularly as the DBS under the Basic Law, be involved, Committee,

themselves are,

supposed

to

Election

proportion of LegCo;

in

the through electing

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we need to know the voting methods to be used in each election before they can be organised;

we also

need to know the composition of the DBS if their members are to play a part in the Election stipulated in the Basic Law.

Committee, as

Secondly, given these interlinkages, it would not be possible for us to agree to one element of the clectoral arrangements divorced from the rest. We need to be able to judge any agreement as a whole. Because the issues are linked, we need to be able to consider and discuss them together. Presumably LegCo members would also find it difficult to make a judgement on one element interlinked package of knowing the rest.

It sign up one

someone

to

of what is essentially an electoral measures without would be rather like asking

of a paragraph

business

agreement while hiding the rest of the terms.

the

the

the

Thirdly, the time available for us to put all necessary legislation in place is limited. Under Boundary and Election Commission (BEC) Ordinance BEC is required to submit their recommendations for LegCo geographical constituency boundaries to the Governor by the end of September 1994. So legislation on electoral arrangements for LegCo will need to be enacted in time for the BEC to draw up those recommendations, and allow for the statutory one-month period of public consultation.

All of this takes

time.

Four main stages are involved :

preparation of drafting instructions to the law draftsman, a lengthy process which cannot even be started until an agreement on the arrangements is reached;

drafting of

which,

the necessary legislation based on past experience, will take

a very considerable amount of time;