The following is issued on behalf of the Electoral Affairs Commission:

Nominations Advisory Committees (NACs) will be set up to help prospective candidates ascertain their eligibility for nomination well before an election and to give timely and impartial advice to returning officers on the validity of a nomination.

The Electoral Affairs Commission (Nominations Advisory Committees) Regulation gazetted today will provide for the appointment of one or more of these committees.

The arrangement is one of the recommendations set out in the proposed Guidelines on Election-related Activities in respect of the 1998 Legislative Council Elections, which was released by the Commission for a two-week public consultation on December 18 last year.

A spokesman for the Commission said: "Past experience has shown that candidates consider such legal services useful as they could have wasted a lot of time, effort and expenses if a returning officer eventually ruled his candidature invalid."

Each NAC will consist of one member with professional or academic qualifications in law.

The functions of the NACs are to provide free legal advice to:

* prospective candidates on whether they are qualified to be nominated as candidates in respect of a geographical or a functional constituency, the Election Committee, an Election Committee subsector or an Election Committee sub-subsector election;

* prospective nominees for the Religious subsector of the Election Committee and designated bodies of this subsector proposing nominees on whether the prospective nominees are qualified to be nominated to represent the subsector; and

* returning officers who have doubts about the validity of any nominations.

NACs will give advice to prospective candidates and nominees and returning officers by certain specified dates, which will be stipulated by the Commission in a gazette notice.

Any advice given by the NACs or refusal to give advice does not preclude a person from seeking nomination or proceeding with a nomination or the presentation of an election petition, and does not preclude a designated body from proceeding with a nomination.

The following is a tentative timetable for the operation of the NACs:

                   Election Committee  Legislative Council
                  Subsector Elections      Elections
                  -------------------  -------------------

Prospective          February 16 to        February 16 to
candidates to apply      March 12             April 8
to NAC for advice

Deadline for NAC     March 15              April 11
to give advice to 
prospective 
candidates

Nomination           March 13 to 20        April 9 to 24
period

Returning officers   March 13 to 21        April 9 to 25
to seek NAC service

Deadline for NAC     March 24              April 28
to give advice to
returning officers

Election Day         April 2               May 24

The regulation will be tabled at the Provisional Legislative Council for negative vetting on January 21.