Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs: Today, we have just passed to the Legislative Council our proposals for the 2012 constitutional development local legislation. As regards the method for selecting the Chief Executive in 2012, there are various major proposals. The number of members of the Election Committee (EC) will be increased from 800 to 1,200, and the four sectors will all be increased proportionately from 200 to 300 members.
Reporter: Why do you think these electoral arrangements for the five new District Council Functional Constituency seats are not unfair to small parties or individual candidates? Why have you decided to keep these arrangements?
Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs: Actually, we are proposing this -- there should be a minimum of 15 nominators for each list of five candidates for the new District Council Functional Constituency. On average, this will mean that for a list of five candidates, only three nominators are required for one candidate. If you survey our geographical constituency and functional constituency arrangements, this is actually the lowest threshold per candidate that we are proposing. It is very reasonable and we believe both large and small parties can join forces to come up with 15 nominators.
Reporter: Why have you decided to keep these arrangements instead of, for example, dividing the constituency into smaller districts so that election campaigning will be cheaper?
Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs: When we passed the 2012 electoral package in June, we made it clear that for the five new seats to be returned from among elected District Councillors through 3.2 million registered voters casting their votes, we should do so by means of proportional representation. This will be a fair arrangement to enable the people of Hong Kong to choose political parties, large and small, and also independent candidates to represent them in the 2012 Legislative Council.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Wednesday, December 8, 2010