Political reforms should allow chief executive to be party head

There is both good news and bad news on the subject of governance in Hong Kong. First the good news - public consultation on political reform has already started, mostly behind the scenes, and much of the shape of a compromise package is beginning to emerge.

Starting with ideas for reform of the Legislative Council in advance of the 2016 election, we have to accept that there simply are not 47 votes - the minimum needed for a two-thirds majority - for the immediate scrapping of all functional constituencies. So the focus has to be on how to reform them.

First to go is the concept of corporate voting, for two reasons. It is in principle indefensible, and any failure to scrap it would mean rejection by pan-democratic forces of the entire reform package.

As a direct corollary of that change, there must be a minimum threshold for the size of the electorate in any functional constituency. A suitable figure might be 50,000 or so (so 30 functional constituencies would account for around half the electorate, while the other half would be voting in the five super seats), but there is room for flexibility on the exact size.

That gets us to 2016, and sets the scene for implementation of universal suffrage at the Legco level in 2020. But the shape of arrangements for the 2017 election of the chief executive is somewhat less certain.

I find it difficult to get excited about the idea of direct nomination by a vast number (80,000? 100,000?) of ordinary voters. The sheer logistics just seem so daunting. So I suspect we are stuck with a nominating committee. It is important to increase its representativeness.