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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Chief Executive, Mr C Y Leung, at the question-and-answer session of the media session at the ground floor lobby of the Office of the Chief Executive at Tamar this afternoon (June 19):
Reporter: Why did you finally decide to put livelihood issues ahead of the Innovation and Technology Bureau (ITB)? Is that meant to mend ties with the pan-democrats?
Chief Executive: First of all, let me correct one misconception out there, and a couple of pan-dem LegCo members have aggravated this misunderstanding in part of the community. And this is this: there is no question of the ITB proposal jumping queue, because ITB proposal as we all know has been around for three years. Three years ago, as soon as I was elected, the question of forming a new bureau, the Innovation and Technology Bureau, was put to the Legislative Council. So it's a very old subject. The 11 initiatives which will now, subject to the agreement of the Chairman of the Finance Committee of LegCo, be submitted to the Finance Committee next Friday are quite new, and many of these were announced by the Financial Secretary in his Budget Speech. So there is no question of ITB jumping queue.
The reason why we want to put these 11 initiatives to the Finance Committee first is that this is entirely in accordance with what I said yesterday. Now that the constitutional development proposal by the Government has been blocked by the minority of LegCo members, we need to move on with economic and livelihood issues that are already in the pipeline so that the community - the community whether they are the underprivileged in Hong Kong, public housing tenants or civil servants and so on, so forth - could feel the benefits of these initiatives as soon as they can and as soon as we can, and that's the reason why we want the Finance Committee of Legislative Council, subject to their agreement, to address these issues first. And we hope that with this new approach we could rebuild a new - at least this is the wish on the part of the Government, this is the initiative on the part of the Government - we hope that we could forge a new relationship with LegCo members, subject of course to their willingness and agreement.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Friday, June 19, 2015
Issued at HKT 15:57
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