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The Government Green Paper 1984 had stated quite clearly that this system "has grown up over many years and has provided much
ecialist knowledge and valuable expertise. For example, the presentative of the legal profession might be elected jointly by members of the Bar Association and the Law Society; and the present system of electing employees' representatives to the Labour Advisory Board might also be used to elect the representatives of labour organisations."
Again, the Patten Plan goes far from the original concept of functional constituencies, and would result in every working person in Hong Kong, about 70% of the adult population, having two votes to the legislature, leaving an underprivileged 30%, including housewives, students, the elderly and others unable to work with only one vote. Hardly democratic!
In the 1984 Green Paper, the Government had said that direct elections "have not been invariably successful as a means of ensuring stable representative government.
In the case of Hong Kong
it is clearly essential that the stability and relative harmony of the community ... should be preserved, particularly at this time. Direct elections would run the risk of a swift introduction of adversarial politics, and would introduce an element of instability at a crucial time." If Mr. Patten's proposals represent the thinking of the British Government, it has obviously drastically changed its mind on this point, even though 1992 - 93 has proved more crucial than when that caution was first expressed nine years ago.
The 1988 Green Paper also discouraged direct elections, while the White Paper of the same year, after the official survey, stated: "The Government has concluded that it would not be right to make such major constitutional changes in 1988, given that opinions in the community on this issue are so clearly divided." Yet, right now, opinions are more divided than at any time in recent memory, simply because Governor Patten's proposals insist on controversial changes that are seriously damaging Hong Kong and causing confrontation with China because they do not converge with the Basic Law as previously agreed.
In point of fact, until the Patten package was announced in October 1992, the electoral system was progressing fairly smoothly. Although the introduction of 18 directly elected seats in 1991 did create some adversarial politics which lengthened debates and slowed down legislation somewhat, as well as put an end to consensus,
nevertheless, the level of progress was acceptable
and manageable.
In early 1990, there was still some demand for a quicker pace of democracy; however, once the Basic Law was finally promulgated in April of that year, most people accepted that there was little hope of making further changes. It had taken many years to write the Basic Law; many Hong Kong people had been consulted in the process and many of their proposals had been incorporated, and
Hong no one expected to get everything Hong Kong had asked for. Kong was accustomed to being refused what it asked from Britain Having reconciled ourselves to so this was no change for them. this situation, it seemed totally unnecessary for Mr. Patten to hold out promises that most of us knew would not happen because
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