ANDY Ho's article headlined, ''Anson leads District Board poll blunders'' (South China Morning Post, August 11), highlights two fundamental electoral problems, which can only get worse as things stand. His point was that the Chief Secretary had left the district in which she is registered by moving to Victoria House. This raises the general question: have electors any rights at all to place a District Board vote in a district in which they no longer live and have no further concern? It may be argued that this problem does not apply to Legco elections because they do not concern geographical matters, so Mrs Chan and the apparently large number of others who have moved but not amended their registration can vote with a clear conscience. If this is the case, however, why are the Legco constituencies based on geography anyway? I am afraid the answer is that that is the way the Greeks did it 2,000 years ago. It suited Britain so long as people didn't move their residence very much, but no one has asked whether it applies today. No one that is till John Naisbitt, the political analyst, published his best-selling book, Global Paradox, earlier this year. His thesis is that geography is no longer the best criterion for constituencies. People move around too much these days; the telecommunications revolution has de-focused national and provincial boundaries; and perhaps most important, people now have other more urgent and permanent interests in which they would rather be grouped for election purposes. For example, The Boundary and Elections Commission has recently published a map showing New Territories constituencies, each of which is dominated by a major town, Sha Tin, Tai Po, Sheung Shui/Fanling, Tuen Mun and so on. If the rural communities have different interests from their urban counterparts, which they surely have, then they will have no say at all. They will be hopelessly outvoted. New Zealand, recognising this same problem for the Maori community, which is spread throughout their country, has given them a constituency of their own which is not geographical. Likewise we should have a rural constituency. The fact is people are not going to vote in constituencies in which they have little interest. Indeed, they don't; 80 per cent have already rejected the present geographical electoral system by not voting in it at all in 1991. What we need to overcome these difficulties are constituencies that group people within their primary interests and in which they have a high degree of permanency. Probably this would mean grouping by career, or like commitment. This would overcome both problems by giving them an interest in voting and by minimising the constant need for re-registration. Mr Patten nearly achieved this, when he conceived the nine new functional constituencies. I say ''nearly'', because I suspect he did it with the wrong objectives. As a result, he included clerical and labour elements which have minimum permanence and hence minimum interest in the grouping. What the Boundary and Elections Commission should be doing, is to have a fundamental re-think about how people in Hong Kong should be regrouped to achieve universal franchise, with maximum commitment of people to their constituencies so they will vote, and with maximum permanence of commitment so they don't need to keep re-registering. Obviously, it's too late this time round, but maybe we can get it right for the next elections, which Beijing indicates are only three years away. SAMUEL P.W. WONG Legislative Councillor Engineering Constituency
