A Study On Functional Constituency System Of Hong Kong Legislative Council In View Of The Basic Law

Functional Constituency system is an electoral device used within Hong KongSpecial Administrative Region. This system is carried out by distinguishingsubsectors and electing Legislative Council councillors according to professions andvocations. It has been one of the most exclusive attentions in the reform of thepolitical structure. Pan-democracy Camp insists that the functional constituencyviolates the Human Rights and doesn’t accord with the general election, so it shouldbe abolished. But the other local residents insist on keeping it and reforming it toaccord with general election.Democracy is one of human’s targets. Along with the social development and thepopulation of modern society, pure democracy didn’t match with the situation, sorepresentative democracy came into being. Representative democracy has developedbig role on guaranteeing human rights and supervising the state power. The peopleelect the govers regularly and give their powers. In the process, regional elections isinstead of occupation elections.Gradually, representative democracy apears many faults:after election, it is hardfor people to control of the officials and lost their rights of participation in politics;Separation of the three powers guarantees the balance of power,but on the otherhand,it leads to low efficiency; the harsh condition of the representative democracycause disturbance and abruption in many countries; regional election gives people theright to vote,but reduces their opportunity to jion and gain the election. FunctionalConstituency system is one of the methods to avoid this.One of purposes of stablishment of Functional Constituency system is to ensureHongkong British authorities’ benefits, it also showed that, the Hongkong Britishauthorities knew the defects of the representative democracy and regional elections. Functional Constituency system inherits administrative absorption of politics’advantages, and shows reasonable core of deliberative democracy.So the Basic Lawcontinued to have the Functional Constituency system.The current Functional Constituency system include the following contents: theimportant positions, industries or occupations are divided into into29sectors, andelect35Legislative Council members.These menbers act accord some special rules.The current Functional Constituency system plays an important role in HK’spolitical development: it helps maintain the Executive Led System, safeguards theinterests of different groups, and embodies the principle of Balanced participation. Forexample, when functional constituency lawmakers exercise interpellation power, theynot only supervise the government, but also maintain the executive led system.But functional constituency system now meets two challenges: does it conform tothe convention on human rights and the principle of equality? In the author’s opinion:functional constituency system doesn’t violates the relevant provisions of humanrights.Though all the people in HK has two voting rights, the functional constituencysystem can’t solve the inequality between different people’s vote.Although there are some shortcomings in functional constituency system, it isvery dangerous to abolish the functional constituency system.It is very wise to retainthis system before the hole HK society has agreement on it.If it is retained, thefunctional constituency system should be reformed in the following two sides:onehand, to expand the electorate, and to reduce the difference of ballot tickets; on theother hand, on the premise of retaining counting votes according to differenetcouncillors, to srengthen constraint of the functional constituency lawmakers.When to reform the functional constituency system depends on the effect of theChief Executive derect election. And it must be in the framework of the Basic Law.