The pan-democratic camp has avoided a major clash among its allies in the upcoming district council elections.
Negotiations between the Civic Party, the Democratic Party, the League of Social Democrats and others have resulted in a preliminary agreement that only 27 out of 270 seats contested by the parties will have more than one pan-democrat candidate.
This is a major breakthrough in the talks, in which there had been fears that an internal split within the pan-democratic camp would be widened by rivalry between individual parties contesting the election for the 18 district councils that will be held later this year.
As it stands, the pan-democrats are planning to field 300 candidates in the district council elections, which will be held later this year and in which more than 400 seats will be contested.
More than one pan-democratic candidate will be pitted against another - as well as pro-government rivals - in 10 seats in New Territories West and 17 in Kowloon and New Territories East after no agreement was reached for these areas. However, pan-democrats still hope to come to an agreement in these constituencies.
In the 2003 district council elections, pan-democrats fought each other in 7 per cent of constituencies. With the emergence of the Civic Party and the league, it had been feared the situation would be worse this time but Mr Sin said the parties hoped to further reduce the number of two-candidate seats.
