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Following is the transcript of the meet-the-media session held by the Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, Mr Stephen Lam, after the workshop organised by the Task Group on Constitutional Development of the Commission on Strategic Development this afternoon (May 29) (English portion):
Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs: I am very grateful to you all for covering our constitutional development taskforce workshop this afternoon. We discussed two major areas.
Firstly, as regards the electoral methods for forming the Legislative Council (LegCo) in 2012, quite a few organisations and other participants at today's workshop are in favour of increasing the number of LegCo seats in 2012. Most have stated a preference for increasing the number of seats to 70. But there is also a proposal that we should increase the number of seats to 80.
As regards how we should treat the increased number of seats, there are those who favour creating new functional constituencies such as a civil service functional constituency, a functional constituency for women, a functional constituency for small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs). There are those who suggest that maybe we should combine the existing functional constituencies and broaden the elector base. Quite a few participants have suggested that we should increase the number of LegCo seats to be returned by District Councillors electing amongst themselves. The proponents of this proposal believe that this would extend political participation room in Hong Kong and would also increase the democratic element in forming the LegCo.
Quite a few participants have suggested in the longer run, by 2020, when we are in a position to implement universal suffrage for forming the LegCo, we should adopt a formula of "one person, two votes", that is one vote for geographical constituencies, another vote for functional constituencies. But of course, there are those who continue to propose that functional constituencies should be abolished when implementing universal suffrage.
As for the electoral method for returning the Chief Executive (CE) in 2012, quite a few participants and organisations are in favour of a smooth transition of the electoral college - the Election Committee formed in 2012 to be transposed to become the Nominating Committee in 2017.
As for the number of members and composition of the committee, there are two views. There are those who suggest that since we only have one interim CE election in 2012 before implementing universal suffrage in 2017, then maybe there should be minimal changes to the composition of the Election Committee. There are those who even suggest that maybe we should keep a membership of 800. On the other hand, there is the view that we should expand substantially the number of members for the Election Committee. There are those who suggest 1,200 members and those who suggest 1,800 members.
So, on various aspects of detailed implementation, we need to continue our discussions. But today's workshop has been useful in that we have been able to gather more views from various think tanks, academics and political organisations. This will be helpful to the Government in planning for the next phase of public consultation.
(To be continued)
Ends/Thursday, May 29, 2008
Issued at HKT 19:53
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