In his constitutional development report to the National People's Congress Standing Committee last month, Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen said 'views are still very diverse' on models for forming the Legislative Council by universal suffrage and on how the functional constituencies should be dealt with. This observation was based on views the government had gathered from the public in response to the green paper on constitutional development, published last July. One of the questions posed in the green paper was what should become of functional constituency seats when the whole of the legislature was to be elected by universal suffrage.
The government suggested three options: replacing all functional constituency seats with district-based seats returned through direct election; retaining functional seats but changing the electoral method; and, increasing the number of seats for district council representatives.
Summarising responses from political groups and the findings of public opinion polls, the government concluded that there was no mainstream view on whether functional constituency seats should be retained. A survey conducted by SCMP/TNS, for example, found that the three options, stated above, were supported by 23 per cent, 30 per cent and 23 per cent of the respondents, respectively.
In another survey, by the University of Hong Kong's Public Opinion Programme, the corresponding levels of support were 23 per cent, 34 per cent and 28 per cent.
Pan-democrats may feel sceptical about this, but it does appear, from these and other polls, that more people would prefer to retain functional constituency seats in some form rather than replace them all with geographically based seats.
The Standing Committee decision, in reply to the chief executive's report, is silent on the fate of functional constituency seats when the entire Legco is to be returned by universal suffrage, no earlier than 2020. The Standing Committee has decided, however, that in the 2012 Legco, there should still be as many functional constituency seats as directly elected geographical ones. Central government officials who came to Hong Kong to explain the Standing Committee decision claimed that elections based on functional constituencies were not necessarily incompatible with universal suffrage.
