TNAG-2732-FCO40-3938-Future-of-Hong-Kong-constitutional-development-1993 — Page 51

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Either:

Functional constituencies could elect, in addition to their member of LegCo, people to serve in the Election Committee. The functional constituencies could be grouped for this purpose into broad categories mirroring those in the Basic Law ("industrial, commercial, financial; professions; services, religious and other");

or:

labour, social

Separate elections could be held in order to elect people to serve on the Election Committee. The electorate could be grouped into similar broad categories on Basic Law lines.

The Governor believes that the first of these options may be more palatable to the Chinese, although they are likely to resist all suggestions for open elections to the Election Committee.

(iv) One other possible amendment to the Governor's proposals would be to introduce a provision that Hong Kong electors could vote either in the functional constituencies or in the geographical constituencies, but not (as at present) in both. The Governor believes that the argument for introducing this change is stronger if the functional constituencies remain of small size so that only a few voters have two votes. He believes that if the functional constituencies are broad, so that most voters have two votes, there is less unfairness, and less need to put an end to the anomaly of double voting.

(v) The Governor proposes that the negotiators should also seek a number of additional assurances from the Chinese, set out in para 8 of his telegram. The most important of these is that if we were to agree electoral arrangements with the Chinese for 1995, the Chinese should undertake that members of LegCo elected in 1995 could serve through 1997 provided that they declared that they upheld the Basic Law. This would preclude any subsequent process of judging whether an individual member did in fact uphold the Basic Law. This could otherwise be used to exclude liberal members from LegCo from 1997.

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THIS IS A COPY THE ORIGINAL HAS BEEN

CLOSED UNDER

ROLEXEMPTION NO.

27(1)