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Raising of bar floated for universal suffrage

Donald Tsang
Klaudia Lee

Electing the chief executive by universal suffrage in 2012 is not impossible if the nomination threshold needed for a candidate to join the race is high enough to ensure that the winner is acceptable to Beijing, a Basic Law Committee member has suggested.

Albert Chen Hung-yee, who is a University of Hong Kong law professor, yesterday called on the pan-democrats to make a compromise to accept a higher threshold in exchange for a speedier introduction of universal suffrage.

'For example, the threshold can be set higher for the first election so that Beijing would agree to the introduction of universal suffrage,' Professor Chen said. 'When it comes to the second and the third election, the threshold could be set lower. This is also in line with the gradual and orderly progress as stated in the Basic Law.'

However, Allen Lee Peng-fei, a local deputy to the National People's Congress, told the audience at a conference by HKU Space that Beijing had sent the message that there was hope for universal suffrage in 2017.

Mr Lee also pointed out that state leaders stressed 'gradual and orderly progress' on Hong Kong's democratic development when they met Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen early this month.

He said they had already ruled out universal suffrage in 2012.

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