Hong Kong's CE office expounds on broadly representative nominating committee

The Office of the Chief Executive (CE) of China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region said late Tuesday that a broadly representative nominating committee is not just a question of absolute numbers but also a question of taking into account the needs and priorities of a broad range of sectors.

The office's statement came after Chief Executive CY Leung met Monday with some overseas media on the composition of the Nominating Committee.

"Hong Kong has a constitutional requirement to form a 'broadly representative' Nominating Committee as part of the process to elect the chief executive by universal suffrage. This has been in the Basic Law since 1990," the office said in the statement.

The current 1,200-member Election Committee includes a diverse range of sub-sectors such as catering, finance, import and export, transport, legal, medical, education, social welfare, agriculture and fisheries, sports and performing arts, religious groups and political representatives.

The chief executive stressed the importance of these sectors at Monday's briefing despite the fact that some of them are very small, according to the statement.

"Any potential chief executive candidates must, therefore, spend time and energy trying to cultivate support in as many of these sub-sectors as possible to satisfy the requirement of being nominated by a 'broadly representative' group. Any nominated candidate in a universal suffrage election in Hong Kong will have to win the greatest number of votes to be elected," said the statement. Enditem