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arrangements for such elections.
- The record shows that we did not succeed in reaching satisfactory arangements for 1995. Since the publication of the Basic Law, Ministers have been pressing the Chinese side to increase the number of directly elected seats. The Chinese have told us that this is not possible. We have therefore had to look again at other aspects of the electoral package discussed in 1990 for other ways of broadening democracy.
The exchanges were also not clear in the sense that the message from the Chinese side (Peking telno 191) was ambiguous on whether the provisions on the composition and ratio of the Election Committee referred to the first LegCo of the new SAR or subsequent LegCos.
The Basic Law itself makes clear (Annex 2, para 2) that the first LegCo is excepted from the composition for an Election Committee spelt out elsewhere in the Basic Law. That composition applies only to subsequent LegCos.
It is not therefore clear that the two sides in these exchanges were talking about the composition of the first LegCo. But the British side were careful to ensure that the Governor's proposals are fully consistent with the five principles spelt out in the paper in FCO telno 98 (only four of these were in fact incorporated into the Basic Law: there is no reference there to voting by secret ballot).
Given the continuing disagreement between Britain and China on one aspect of the electoral package (the number of directly elected seats) and the failure of the Basic Law to spell out the composition which would apply to the Election Committee for the first LegCo, the Governor was entitled to come forward with a proposal of his own on composition which respected the principles agreed between the two sides.
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PF Ricketts
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