Ex-chief secretary Anson Chan renews call for popular mandate in 2017 election
Perfect democracy may not be possible when it comes to nominating committee, ex-official says
Former chief secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang renewed her call for a popular mandate for the nominating committee in the 2017 chief executive election, but said the new model may be limited in how much it can differ from the current set-up.
While it was difficult to ensure a "perfectly" democratic election in 2017, Hongkongers would accept no less than "genuine steps forward" in political reform, Chan said yesterday.
The remarks by Chan, who chairs the moderate pan-democratic group Hong Kong 2020, came a month after former justice secretary Elsie Leung Oi-sie dismissed a pan-democratic call for all 3.2 million registered voters to choose the members of the next nominating committee.
Leung said that would run counter to a decision by the National People's Congress Standing Committee made six years ago on the 2017 poll.
That decision said the chief executive may be elected by universal suffrage in 2017, "upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures" - as stipulated in the Basic Law.
But it also said the composition of the committee could be modelled on the current Election Committee, which nominates and picks the chief executive.