Commerce key for universal suffrage, says Anson Chan

Former chief secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang emphasised that she hoped to forge a consensus among businesses on the path to genuine universal suffrage, as their participation would be vital to achieving full democracy and improving governance.

Chan said she also remained "keen" on communicating with Beijing in order to persuade the national leadership to trust Hongkongers - in response to National People's Congress Law Committee chairman Qiao Xiaoyang's remarks last month that the city's chief executive must not be confrontational towards the central government.

The city faced an "urgency" to draw up a road map pointing the way to universal suffrage, she said. Towards that end, she would relaunch the nine-strong Citizens' Commission on Constitutional Development, which she founded in 2008 to facilitate public discussion on political reform.

The reborn commission will take the name "Hong Kong 2020", which now has six members. "[I want] to make it clear that we are united in our commitment to meeting the 2020 target date" when universal suffrage would be in place for the chief executive and Legislative Council elections, she said.

Past commission members, including University of Hong Kong law dean Professor Johannes Chan Man-mun, former executive councillor Allen Lee Peng-fei and former Bar Association chairwoman Gladys Li, had joined the new group, while pan-democratic lawmakers Sin Chung-kai and Dennis Kwok Wing-hang would not, she said.

She said she did not want businesses to misunderstand that the group's work was "directed by the agendas of political parties". Former lawmaker Lee Wing-tat, of the Democratic Party, had joined only as a research director.