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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 fourth meeting of the Task Group on Constitutional Development of the Commission on Strategic Development this (June 27) afternoon:
Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs: I am very grateful to all of you for coming to cover the fourth meeting of the Task Group on Constitutional Development of the Commission on Strategic Development. In the last four months, we have gone through a process of preliminary discussions to generate ideas for formulating options for public consultations for determining the electoral methods for the Chief Executive (CE) in 2012 and the electoral methods for forming the Legislative Council (LegCo) in that same year. The process has been helpful. Members who attended the Commissionˇ¦s meeting today were generally of the view that we should make our best endeavours to roll forward democracy for Hong Kong so that by 2012 we will come to a midway point and that we would be able to pave the way for the introduction of universal suffrage for returning the CE in 2017 and for forming the LegCo through universal suffrage in 2020.
As regards the method for returning the CE in 2012, members were generally of the view that we should aim at having a composition of the Election Committee which would be able to be transformed to form the Nominating Committee in 2017.
Also, generally speaking, members were of the view that we should maintain a nomination threshold of one-eighth for 2012. We should maintain the four sectors in forming the Election Committee, i.e. the business sector, the professional sector, the social service sector and the political sector.
As for the actual composition of the committee, most members believed that we should consider options which would involve having more than 800 members. But as to whether this would involve 1,000, 1,200, 1,600 or 1,800 members, this is a matter for further discussions and consideration. Likewise, it is a matter for further discussions and consideration as regards the electoral base.
As for the electoral method for forming the LegCo in 2012, members were generally of the view that we should aim at increasing the number of seats and most of them believed that 70 seats would be generally appropriate. There are some members who mentioned the option of having 80 seats.
That brings us to address the next question, i.e. we should have five, or half, of these seats coming out from geographical constituencies and then the other half from functional constituencies. One option mentioned more by various members would be to have district councillors electing more legislative councillors from amongst themselves. This will also have the indirect effect of broadening the electoral base for functional constitutencies.
I think we have now arrived at a point where we have gathered quite a lot of views from among Commission members and also through discussions in the LegCo in the last two months. This will be helpful to us in formulating our ideas for the next round of public consultation. By the fourth quarter of this year, we will decide as soon as possible as to when we launch the next round of public consultation for 2012 electoral methods.
(To be continued.)
Ends/Friday, June 27, 2008
Issued at HKT 19:51
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