From: albee@ahkcus.Eng.Sun.COM (Dennis Lee)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.hongkong
Subject: Patten's speech
Date: 7 Oct 1992 20:30:03 GMT
Organization: Alliance of Hong Kong Chinese in the United States
NNTP-Posting-Host: ahkcus

The following is a short write-up on Patten's speeched delivered
yesterday.  Please excuse any inaccuracies.  Also, those netters in
HK may give us more info.

-dennis
AHKCUS Coordinating Secretary
From postmaster@ahkcus.org Wed Oct  7 09:21:34 1992
Reply-To: exco@ahkcus.org
Sequence-Id: <25>
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 00:10:45 +0800
From: kin@decmgt.ahkcus.org (kin ming fung)
To: exco@ahkcus.org
Subject: Newsflash of Patten's speech, pls forward to members, hknet, ...
Content-Length: 2972

A quite newsflash of Governor Chris Patten's politcal plan, as delivered
to the Legislative Council today.  Please excuse possible inaccuracies,
in order to get the news out as quickly as possible.

Exco and Legco members will not overlap.  Exco members will not have
political affiliation.  7 Exco members resigned today: Alan Lee, Edward
Ho Sing Tin, Rita Fan (who also resigned her Legco membership), Selina
Chow (the above from CRC), Wang Gengwu (Vice Chancellor of hku), Andrew
Wong Wang Fat, and Hui Yin Fat.  Two official Exco members, the armed forces
commander and ?financial sec Foley? were also replaced by Anson Chan and
John Chan ?Cho Chak?.  Lydia Dunn were one of the ?two/few? who retained
her seat.  Newly appointed members include Edward Chen (kwun yiu), and
Felicia Mcliffe.

Other constitutional changes are his "recommendation", pending
discussion with China, but has strong support from Major, who announced
his strong support today.

Voting age to lower from 21 to 18.  Abolition of nominated members in
all district boards election in 1994 in all 94 districts, except for new
territories automatic members from HeungYeeKuk.  These elected board
members will form the election committe who will return 10 seats in the
1995 Legco election.

Greatly expanding the voting members of functional constituency, to the
effect that every one of hk's 2.7 million workers will have one, and
only one, vote in a functional constituency.  S/he must choose which
functional constituency to vote in if s/he belongs to more than one.
Instead of each company returning one vote, each member of the board of
director will have a vote.

This was denounced by the News China News Agency as "irresponsible and
reckless", as a constitutional change without prior consultation with
China, to which Patten politely rebuffed that China did the same earlier
when she tried to affect Exco membership without consultation with
Britian.

Education: to put 2~3 more teachers in each primary and secondary
school.

Welfare: to have 21% real growth in fund annually.  Elderly monthly
allowance to be tagged to inflation automatically.

Housing: to build ~100 flats each day until 1997, to have an extra 13000
homeowners.  To help sandwich class, before a housing project can be
started for them, government will buy flats (1000 for the first year)
from the market and sell to them at reduced prices.

Environment: to spend hk$7B on solid waste treatment, from government;
to spend a similar amount on waste water treatment, from additional
charges on water and sewage.

Finance: the exchange rate pegged to the US dollar will remain.  The
Exchange Fund ?bureau? will merge with the ?bank regulation commission?.

Martin Lee's comment: disappointment that Legco members cannot be Exco
members is a step backward for democracy.

Joseph Cheng's comment: Patten has already exploited all the grey areas
left in the Basic Law to push democracy.

--kin fung, computer centre, chinese u