THE Legislative Council elections are to come under international scrutiny with the dispatch of an American research team to monitor the polls.
A group of about four staff members from the International Republican Institute will travel to the territory to spend four days watching the elections unfold.
The team, which will be led by the institute's election specialists, will then file a report summing up the territory's electoral arrangements, the mood of the public, and the future prospect for fair elections after the 1997 handover. The project is being paid for with a grant of US$25,000 (HK$193,400) from the National Endowment for Democracy - a federally-funded US body which hands out cash for human rights work in non-democratic nations.
It funds many China-related groups, including US citizen and activist Harry Wu Hongda's Laogai Research Institute.
The International Republican Institute - which is affiliated to the Republican Party but does not necessarily promote the party line in its overseas projects - has recently been working closely with the Beijing Government on a scheme to educate local cadres and the public on how to organise open and fair local elections.
It also has a long history of monitoring national elections in fledgling democracies.
'There's no question of rigging of the [Hong Kong] elections, but it's mainly a matter of seeing just how they are conducted,' an official from the National Endowment for Democracy said.
