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Seminar on Constitutional Development
(11 June 2004)
Group Discussion Summaries
Yellow Group: Professor Peter Yuen
(Translation)
Method for Selecting the Chief Executive
The Number of Members of the Election Committee
The Composition of the Election Committee
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Participants agreed that District Council members should become ex-officio members of the Election Committee because elected District Council members were returned through universal suffrage.
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Participants generally considered that the middle class (including people at the management level) and the grassroots were inadequately represented in the Election Committee.
The Number of Members Required for Nominating Candidates
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Participants wished to see more candidates. Thus, they considered that the current requirement on the number of subscribers for each candidate should be reviewed.
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A participant suggested that the nomination of any candidate for the office of Chief Executive should be supported by a majority or a certain percentage of Legislative Council Members so that the legislature would not always be the opposition party.
The Delineation and Size of the Electorate of the Election Committee
Others
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Some participants suggested that in order to be accountable to their electorates, members of the Election Committee should, when they ran for the membership of the Election Committee, explicitly state which candidates for the Chief Executive Office they would support. Technically, this could be achieved only if the candidates for the office of Chief Executive were
known when the election of the Election Committee took place, and if the election of the Chief Executive were conducted by open ballot. However, some participants did not agree with this proposal.
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A participant proposed to review the requirement that the Chief Executive should not have any political affiliation.
Method for Forming the Legislative Council
The Number of Seats in the Legislative Council
The Delineation and Size of the Electorate of Legislative Council Functional Constituencies
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The majority of participants opined that as a result of the transformation of our economy, the role of some sectors had become increasingly important. The delineation of functional constituencies should reflect these new developments.
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Some participants proposed to review whether the number of votes that a corporation had should be adjusted in accordance with the size of its staff.
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Some participants opined that there was also a need to review individual votes. Apart from a few major professional sectors, the remaining sectors were mainly represented by corporate votes. As more and more new professions, for example, tour guides and real estate agents, emerged with their own registration systems, consideration should be given to increasing the
number of individual votes.
Others
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A participant opined that discussions should not focus only on the elections for 2007/08. There should be a clear long-term plan for constitutional development.
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A participant opined that the system of proportional representation adopted for the geographical constituencies election should be reviewed to allow for more independent candidates to be elected.
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Participants generally agreed on the need to groom political talents as this was crucial to the quality and operation of the legislature.
Other Views
Relationship between the Executive and the Legislature
The Accountability System
There was a suggestion to explore whether more posts could be taken up by politicians under the accountability system, or to introduce a system of junior ministers similar to that of other jurisdictions.
(Please refer to the video recording for the floor speech.)
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