ARRANGEMENTS
FOR THE
1998 ELECTIONS
5. Following the handover, the HKSAR Government
moved quickly to prepare for elections to a new legislature. The
Legislative Council Ordinance was adopted by the provisional legislature
on 28 September, and sets out the detailed arrangements for the
elections. The arrangements reflect the framework established
by the Basic Law and by the "Decision on the Specific Method
for the Formation of the Hong Kong SAR's First Legislative Council",
adopted by the Hong Kong SAR Preparatory Committee in May 1997.
6. As in 1995, the 1998 LegCo will be composed
of 20 seats elected from geographical constituencies, 30 from
functional constituencies, and 10 by an Election Committee. The
key differences between the 1995 and 1998 arrangements are in
the arrangements within these different types of constituencies.
Geographical constituencies
7. In 1995, first-past-the-post voting in 20
single-seat constituencies was used. In 1998, a list-based system
of proportional representation will be adopted: candidates will
be elected from five multi-seat constituencies of three to five
seats each. Voters in each constituency will vote for a list of
candidates from one party. Seats will be allocated within the
constituency roughly in proportion to the number of votes cast
for each party. 2.8 million voters are registered to vote in these
constituencies, compared with 2.53 million in 1995, and 1.91 million
in 1991.
Functional constituencies
8. Functional constituencies (FCs) were originally
intended to represent business and professional sectors said to
make a special contribution to the community. The 1995 arrangements
developed the concept by extending the franchise of the nine new
FCs to include virtually the whole working population. For the
1998 elections, the HKSAR Government have returned to the earlier
definition of this type of constituency. Accordingly, the franchise
has been significantly reduced: from an eligible electorate of
about 2.7 million in 1995 to around 229,000. About 148,000 voters
have registered to vote. In 1991 the electorate was just over
103,000.
9. There are 28 FCs, listed at Annex B. The
Labour FC returns three members; the others return one each. The
electorates range from 50 individuals in the Urban Council FC
to almost 75,000 in the Education FC. In the first six FCs, a
system of "preferential elimination" will allow voters
to list candidates in order of choice. Candidates with fewer votes
will be gradually eliminated and votes redistributed until one
candidate gains an overall majority. In the other constituencies,
first-past-the-post voting will be used. A significant departure
from 1995 is that corporate voting (as opposed to voting by individuals)
will be used to elect 20 of the members. Corporate voting had
been used up to 1991 but had resulted in abuses, and was replaced
with individual voting in all FCs in 1995.
The Election Committee
10. The Election Committee comprises 800 members,
with 200 from each of the four sectors: industry, commerce, finance;
the professions; labour, social services, religion; political
(including members of the provisional legislature and Hong Kong
deputies to the Chinese National People's Congress). Elections
were held on 2 April to choose 588 members of the Committee (the
other members are from uncontested subsectors, ex-officio, or
directly nominated by the Religious Subsector). A total of 32,630
voters participated, a turn-out of about 23 per cent. The 1995
Election Committee was composed of District Board members who
had themselves been directly elected in local elections.
11. On 24 May, each elector on the Committee
must cast ten votes. The candidate who obtains most votes will
be elected first, followed by the candidate with the second most,
and so on, until ten candidates have been elected. Nominations
to stand in this part of the election must be supported by at
least 10 Election Committee members.
Other provisions
12. Other key provisions of the Legislative
Council Ordinance include:
— candidates and voters must be permanent
residents of the HKSAR. HKSAR permanent residents with foreign
passports or who are non-Chinese may only stand in 12 designated
FCs (the Basic Law stipulates that no more than 20 per cent of
LegCo members may hold foreign passports or be non-Chinese);
— voters eligible to vote both in the
FCs and Election Committee may only vote in the latter. They are
also entitled to cast a vote in the geographical constituencies;
— an independent Electoral Affairs
Commission (EAC) has been established to oversee the elections.
It is chaired by a highly respected judge, Justice Woo Kwok-hing,
who headed the pre-handover Boundary and Election Commission.
COMPATIBILITY
OF THE
ARRANGEMENTS WITH
THE JOINT
DECLARATION, BASIC
LAW AND
1990 SINO-BRITISH
CORRESPONDENCE
Joint Declaration
13. The Joint Declaration provides only that
the legislature must be constituted by elections. It does not
define the nature of these elections. As far as we know, there
has been no suggestion in Hong Kong, including from those who
have criticised the arrangements, that they are inconsistent with
the Joint Declaration.
Basic Law
14. The compatibility of these arrangements
with the Basic Law is primarily for the Hong Kong courts to judge.
It is nevertheless clear that the basic composition of the 1998
LegCo will accord with the requirements of the Basic Law.
1990 Sino-British correspondence
15. The 1990 correspondence was an attempt to
reach agreement on what the Basic Law should say about the composition
of LegCo, in particular the number of directly elected seats.
It also touched—inconclusively—on pre-handover arrangements.
The Chinese Government claimed that the 1995 electoral arrangements
breached understandings reached in this correspondence. In fact,
at the end of these exchanges, the question of electoral arrangements
up to 1997 remained open. Following the implementation of the
Basic Law, the question of compatibility of current arrangements
with this correspondence may be less relevant.
