Hong Kong’s leader has given a public assurance the city can still move towards greater democracy after Beijing’s planned changes to the electoral system and denied the overhaul was aimed at eliminating the opposition camp. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on Monday also ruled out conducting a formal consultation exercise over the contentious changes, only promising to launch an “intensive” drive to explain the proposals to the public. Speaking for the first time in public since Beijing laid down the reform plan, Lam expressed her gratitude to the central government for its “timely, lawful and constitutional” move to take the lead in “plugging the loopholes” in the electoral framework, as the city did not have the power to handle the changes on its own. “I am actually quite gratified that as a chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region I am now doing quite a couple of good improvements that will ensure the long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong that will safeguard the implementation of ‘one country and two systems,” she said. “The first one is the enactment and implementation of the national security law … The second thing is now we are improving the electoral system by making sure whoever is governing and administering Hong Kong in the future is somebody who loves the country, who loves Hong Kong.” Lam again refused to be drawn into whether she would seek a second term next year or if she was confident that she could enter the race in the wake of the reforms. “What I am doing is not about my personal preference and inclination,” she said. “I am doing it to improve the election system in Hong Kong.” She was speaking a day after meeting Chinese Vice-Premier Han Zheng, the state leader in charge of Hong Kong affairs, who said the electoral changes were primarily aimed at preventing subversion under the city’s national security law. Wang Chen, vice-chairman of the National People’s Congress, last week told the opening of the Communist Party’s annual plenary session there was a pressing need to eliminate “loopholes and deficiencies” that had enabled “anti-China, destabilising elements” to threaten national sovereignty and security. Under the plan, the establishment-dominated Election Committee is expected to grow to 1,500 members from the current 1,200 and be given considerable power to nominate all candidates for Legislative Council elections, while also sending some of its own members to the legislature. The overhaul will effectively leave the fate of the opposition at the mercy of this committee. A “full mechanism” is also to be introduced to vet the qualifications of candidates for office. Lam emphasised that the role of the Election Committee would not be “transitional” as the overhaul would empower it to nominate all lawmakers in the legislature and become “a core element in the elections”. Here’s everything we know – and don’t know – about Hong Kong’s proposed electoral overhaul “The improvements to the electoral system in HKSAR are not designed to favour someone [in the pro-establishment camp]. They are designed to ensure that whoever is administrating Hong Kong is patriotic, and this is only right in terms of political ethics,” Lam said, adding it was “inconceivable” for someone who was governing to be unpatriotic. Authorities were not targeting pan-democrats, she insisted, adding that those “who do not love the country and Hong Kong undermine the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong, challenge the authority of the central government, and collude with foreign powers to impose sanctions on the country and Hong Kong”. She also urged the public to leave behind the dichotomy of pan-democrats and pro-establishment figures, insisting the latter could also be “democratic”. But Lam ducked a question about whether she should bear the responsibility of “undoing” the city’s democratic progress over the past decade by triggering the social unrest in 2019 sparked by a now-withdrawn extradition bill. The city’s constitutional development must be put in the context of the one country, two systems principle that granted Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy in managing its affairs and there was no “so-called international standard of democracy”, she said. Japanese firms will leave Hong Kong due to China crackdown, SBI boss says Lam argued that Hong Kong could still move towards democracy when everything has been restored “to its proper constitutional order”, noting that Article 45 and 68 of the Basic Law – which stipulate universal suffrage as the ultimate aim of the chief executive and Legco elections – were not being amended Several pro-establishment heavyweights had earlier suggested the legislative elections, which were originally scheduled for last September, but postponed for a year by the government citing the Covid-19 pandemic, would be pushed back in light of the electoral overhaul. Lam however said it was only “logical” that polls for the Election Committee should be held ahead of the Legco elections. In Beijing, delegates to the National People’s Congress began deliberating on the proposed changes. A local delegate told the Post that a draft resolution – to be endorsed by the national legislature this week – was distributed for group discussion, but it only referred to broad principles and directions, and did not go into details. Michael Tien Puk-sun, a Hong Kong deputy to the NPC, said he suggested during the group discussion on Monday there should be proportionate and balanced distribution of seats returned by geographical constituencies, functional constituencies and the Election Committee if the number of Legco seats were to be increased. Beijing officials also tasked Hong Kong delegates to support the city government’s work to control the coronavirus situation , NPC delegate Ng Leung-sing said. Additional reporting by Gary Cheung