Seeking a vote for pragmatism
The first in a 3-part series on the practical issues of bringing in universal suffrage for the chief executive poll
Pan-democrats favour "public nomination" of candidates for the chief executive election in 2017.
But some pragmatic members of the camp, realising the ultimate power of the nominating committee to decide the final candidates, are more concerned about how the committee decides on which candidates will go to the popular vote.
They believe the committee should adopt the "one man, one vote" system when deciding on the candidates.
Qiao Xiaoyang , chairman of the National People's Congress Law Committee, said in March that the nominating committee might make a collective decision on candidates.
But pan-democrats fear this could see their candidate being screened out.
The practice would be a departure from that adopted in the 2012 chief executive election when an aspirant only needed to secure the nomination of 150 of the 1,200 members of the Election Committee to enter the race.
Under public nomination, any registered voter could nominate a candidate, who would then have to be endorsed by a certain number of people before being put forward to the committee. Eleven out of 27 pan-democratic lawmakers have signed a charter prepared by student-led group Scholarism promising to fight for public nomination.