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Following is a transcript of a media briefing by the Secretary for Constitutional Affairs, Mr Stephen Lam, after the meeting of the Committee on Governance and Political Development of the Commission on Strategic Development today (April 12) (English portion):
Secretary for Constitutional Affairs: I would say that after today's meeting, there are three main points that we can draw conclusions (on) with regard to the question of universal suffrage for the Chief Executive (CE).
Firstly, most members of the Commission on Strategic Development (the Commission) suggested that if we are to form a nomination committee in accordance with Article 45 of the Basic Law, then we should model that committee on the composition of the Election Committee (EC). However, the total number of members, the proportional representation among different sectors and sub-sectors can be varied.
Secondly, as regards the question of nomination threshold, there is still no main-stream opinion. There are those that suggested that may be we should stick to the current threshold of one-eighth. There are those who suggested that may be we should increase the threshold to one quarter or one-fifth.
A new point has been made today and that is, according to Article 45 of the Basic Law, we should establish a nominating committee with broad representation and that the nomination process itself should be democratic.
What does this democratic process involve? Does this involve potential candidates presenting their election manifestos before the nominating committee? These are the sort of fresh questions raised today.
The third point which is pretty clear is that among members of the Commission, there is a clear recognition that we can make more progress with regard to implementation of universal suffrage for the CE, but that it is relatively more difficult to achieve such consensus for implementing universal suffrage for the Legislative Council (LegCo).
And, therefore, the clear conclusion is perhaps we should go for implementation of universal suffrage for the CE first and that for the LegCo can follow later. However, I wish to emphasise that at this point in time, the HKSAR Government has not yet drawn any conclusion. We still hope to narrow differences among different political parties, different groups and different individuals with regard to the question of the future of functional constituencies (and therefore the question of implementing universal suffrage for the LegCo).
I should also add that even though we have not yet set the course and outlined the parameters for presenting the three types of models for implementing universal suffrage in the Green Paper, we have made clear that there are going to be four criteria.
Firstly, whichever models we are going to set out in the Green Paper have to be consistent with the Basic Law. And no amendments to the main provisions of the articles of the Basic Law should be required.
Secondly, (we hope that) any proposal put forth should attract majority support among Hong Kong people.
Thirdly, we hope that any proposal put forth will stand a reasonable chance of securing two-thirds majority in the LegCo.
And fourthly, we also hope that any proposal put forth will stand a good chance of being considered seriously by the Central Government. Only then would we be able to attain universal suffrage for Hong Kong.
Reporter: Does that mean that Anson Chan's proposal or the proposal adopted by the democrats are not likely to be included in the Green Paper because they might not be able to meet all the criteria?
Secretary for Constitutional Affairs: I would say that all the proposals and packages of recommendations we have received up till now, provided that they are consistent with the Basic Law, we would include in the context of the Green Paper. But for now, we have not yet decided which three types of models we would present for public consultation in the Green Paper. But we would definitely make a full and comprehensive presentation of all the packages and proposals which we have received from many months before (now and) until June this year.
Reporter: … in the Basic Law ….
Secretary for Constitutional Affairs: I think the proposal put forth by the 21 Legislative Councillors accepts that there should be a nominating committee established according to Article 45 of the Basic Law. So therein lies some common ground for us to proceed. We will present all these packages (which have been put to us) faithfully in the context of the Green Paper.
(to be continued)
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)
Ends/Thursday, April 12, 2007
Issued at HKT 21:06
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