And both the bill and the CE electoral arrangements will be fully consistent with the Basic Law, the de facto constitution of the SAR, a government spokesman said on Saturday. The SAR government has made this clear on different occasions in the past, he added.

The remarks came after the SAR government announced on Friday that the next CE would be elected by the same Election Committee (EC) which re-elected six legislators in September.

In a government paper to Legislative Council's Constitutional Affairs Panel, the government also suggested that CE Tung Chee-hwa fix the election date which should be six months before his term ends in June 2002.

The timing of the announcement aims to tie in with the legislative procedures of the CE Election Bill, according to government sources.

The spokesman refuted reports claiming that the government had deliberately chosen such a timing - six months after the EC was set up - to announce the decision. He said such reports were groundless and misleading.

Some critics say the delayed decisions might cause people to suspect that Tung had waited until he had seen the make-up of the committee before deciding its second function.

Referring to reports querying why the government announced the decision all of a sudden, the spokesman said that at the October meeting of the Constitutional Affairs Panel of the new term LegCo, panel members had urged the government, at the earliest possible date, to present the legislative proposals for the CE election and to consult with them on their views, the spokesman said.

The government's paper on Friday outlined the preliminary legislative proposals for the CE election for discussion at the LegCo Constitutional Affairs Panel meeting on Monday.

"We will listen to members' views on our preliminary legislative proposals at the panel meetings. Once the drafting of the Bill has been completed, we will introduce the CE Election Bill into the LegCo as soon as possible," he said.

(China Daily 12/18/2000)