2014-08-04
HKT 18:45
A group of 13 economists and academics have put forward an amended political reform plan they said can prevent the pre-screening of chief executive candidates and
"conform strictly" to the Basic Law.
Their proposal features an all-or-nothing "list" system where the nominating committee either endorses, or rejects, all eligible candidates - thus preventing any individual candidate from being eliminated from the poll.
The academics said they hoped their updated plan can be acceptable to Beijing, the Hong Kong government and different sectors of society.
The plan is complicated and calls for the doubling of the size of the old election committee.
One thousand two hundred members of the new nominating committee will be chosen in four sectors like in the past.
But another 1,200 members can be chosen by the general electorate.
All they would need is the endorsement of 1,200 or more voters.
If there are more than 1,200 eligible candidates, they'd be chosen by a random draw.
This new nominating committee would then chose candidates for chief executive. Each member will have one vote.
All potential chief executive candidates will need to be endorsed by at least a fifth of the committee.
The new "list" proposal will then kick in. All eligible chief executive candidates - up to five - will be placed on a single list.
More than half the nominating committee will then have to sanction the list before the the new chief executive is elected through universal suffrage.
If the list gets less than half the vote, all candidates would be rejected and the process will go back to square one.
