Transcript of SCMA's remarks at media session
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Following is the transcript of remarks made by the Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, Mr Patrick Nip, at a media session before attending the inauguration ceremony of the Federation of Hong Kong Zhuhai Community today (November 13):
Reporter: (about the Public Consultation on Review of Electoral Arrangements)
Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs: Briefly speaking, we want to consult the public on three issues. The first one is about the regulation of electoral advertisement through Internet, including social media. We propose to introduce a specific exemption so that web surfers can avoid having the criminal liability by simply expressing their opinions on the Internet.
The second issue is the regulation on election survey, whether we should introduce regulation in this aspect to prevent the announcement or disclosure of the election survey results before the poll ends.
The third one is on polling hours. The present polling lasts for 15 hours, from 7.30am to 10.30pm, which is really long. We are proposing whether there is scope for us to shorten the polling hours a bit so that we could start the counting and finish all the counting and announce the results early to facilitate the conduct of the polling. These are the three issues that we would like to consult the public's views. For the first issue, we have specific proposals. On the second one, regarding the election survey regulation and also the polling hours, we know that there are diverse opinions. We would like to listen to public's views and then we'll consult the Legislative Council again before we consider how to take the matters forward.
(Please also refer to the Chinese part of the transcript.)
Ends/Monday, November 13, 2017
Issued at HKT 20:44
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