Pan-dems' voting exercise may include government reform plan

The government's political reform package could be one of the options to be included in a civil referendum exercise next year.

The pan-democrats will decide which proposal towards universal suffrage they will endorse based on the referendum results.

The Alliance for True Democracy - a grouping of 26 of the 27 pan-democratic lawmakers - will meet the University of Hong Kong's public opinion programme director Robert Chung Ting-yiu on Wednesday to work out the details of the electronic voting exercise.

It will be a separate exercise from the one to be held by the Occupy Central civil disobedience movement early next year, convenor Joseph Cheng Yu-shek said after a street forum in Mong Kok yesterday.

"Unless the government's proposal is ridiculously undemocratic - in which case we would not have to bother at all - I believe we would be willing to make it an option in our electronic voting exercise to gauge public views," he said.

The government has yet to begin a formal public consultation on its political reform package. Sources said the first round would come by January, but that a concrete package with the details of universal suffrage in the 2017 chief executive election was expected only at the second round, probably in the middle of next year.

Cheng said the alliance's exercise, which would cost about HK$200,000, would be conducted after the government unveiled its proposal.