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HK democrats warned on demands

An official mouthpiece of the Chinese government yesterday condemned as illegal calls by Hong Kong democrats for a timetable setting out the territory's transition to full democracy.

A commentary in the China Daily newspaper said the calls flew in the face of its constitution.

"The demand is not only unlawful, it is impractical," said the article, signed by Chen Hanwen and headed "Timetable demand goes against the law."

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 with the promise of a high degree of autonomy.

It is obliged by its post-colonial constitution, the Basic Law, to allow its citizens to elect their leaders by universal suffrage.

However, the vaguely worded document gives no timetable for change and the city has been riven since the handover by a row over when that transition should happen.

China opposes any potentially destabilizing political reforms. In April last year it issued a ruling that stymied democrats' calls for a switch to universal suffrage by 2007, when the next chief executive must be selected.

It dictated, instead, a process of gradual change. Last month the Hong Kong government proposed that the half-elected, half-appointed legislature be expanded from 60 to 70 seats and that a committee of elite figures and businesspeople charged with selecting the chief executive be doubled to 1,600.

Opposition lawmakers said the plan did not go far enough to meet the Basic Law's aims and have vowed to block it in the legislature.

Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權) has just returned from a tour of the US where he has been trying to drum up support for the reforms package.

However a former leader of the democrats, Legislator Martin Lee (李柱銘), will travel to the US next month to offer the opposition's alternative view at a series of meetings with political groups, the Ming Pao Daily newspaper said.

The China Daily article said a ruling in April last year had limited the local government's reform proposals to reforms up to 2008 and any timetable beyond that would be wrong.

"Such a demand is removed from reality," the newspaper said.

It concluded that contrary to democrats' complaints, the latest proposals would take the city much further along the path to one-man, one-vote.

"The apprehension that universal suffrage would be forever delayed is by no means warranted," it said.
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