LAST week the Government-appointed Boundary and Election Commission (BEC) published proposed guidelines on activities relating to geographical constituency elections. These long-awaited proposals should help to concentrate the community's mind on finding ways to ensure clean and fair elections.
By Asian and even international standards, direct elections in Hong Kong can be described as relatively non-corrupt. But the same cannot be said about elections by limited franchise, a method by which most members of the Legislative Council were selected.
Limited franchise creates the environment for horse trading behind closed doors. In some functional constituencies, such as the banks, trade unions, commercial and industrial federations, elections were never held because the parties concerned resolved to field only one candidate each.
Several years ago, a vote rigging scandal broke out in the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, in which companies rushed to join the chamber in order to be able to vote in the upcoming functional constituency election.
All this begs the questions of whether Hong Kong is ready for democracy. The answer is yes: the Hong Kong people are ready for universal suffrage, and the colony should get rid of limited franchise.
Not too long ago, I was asked to name a country where the majority of the inhabitants were ethnic Chinese and that multi-party democracy was able to flourish. My answer was and still is Taiwan. But I have a suspicion that, given half a chance, Hong Kong can also do it.
Taiwan may have multi-party democracy, but I despair at the widespread and flagrant corruption in their electoral process - a severe blemish which the ruling Kuomintang admitted and condemned, but seemed powerless to eradicate.