Administration's Response to Concerns raised on 14 October 1999
by Members of the Bills Committee
on Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Conduct) Bill
| C1: |
The Administration should consider making it an offence for a person to offer an advantage to a candidate as an inducement for the candidate not to his best effort to run an election. (C3 of meeting on 21 September 1999)
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| A1: |
We are considering the Committee's suggestion and whether an amendment should be moved by the Administration to that effect.
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| C2: |
The Administration is requested to provide the timing of the four complaints concerning the issue of tendered ballot papers in the 1998 LegCo election and information on how these complaints were investigated. (C1 of meeting on 22 September 1999)
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| A2: |
The four complaints were made in four different geographical constituencies at 3:45 p.m., 6 p.m. (2 cases) and 8:20 p.m. The normal procedure is that the Presiding Officer receiving such a complaint would ascertain from the complainant the grounds for his complaint, check with the polling staff if they had any recollection of when and how the ballot paper was previously issued under the same name as the complainant, verify if the polling staff had followed proper procedures and report the findings to the EAC.
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| C3: |
The Administration should amend clause 19 so that any unspent election donation should be given to a charitable institution. (C6 of meeting on 22 September 1999)
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| A3: |
We are considering the Committee's suggestion and whether an amendment should be moved by the Administration to that effect.
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| C4: |
The Administration is requested to provide statistics on the number of applications for court order under section 26 of CIPO (an equivalent of clause 31) to except innocent acts in relation to unauthorized expenses in previous elections before1998. (C3 of meeting on 23 September 1999)
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| A4: |
According to information obtained by the Department of Justice from its files, there were two such applications in the 1995 LegCo election, two applications in the Municipal Council elections in 1995 and three applications in the 1994 DB election.
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| C5: |
The Administration should consider amending clause 29 and 30 to remove any ambiguity. (C1 of meetings on 4 and 5 October 1999)
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| A5: |
We will revise the wordings used in these two clauses in order to address the Committee's concern.
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Constitutional Affairs Bureau
15 October 1999
CWP1172
