A Hong Kong lawmaker has called on Beijing to set a timetable for democratic reform to ease uncertainty and political tension in the territory.
Legislator Bernard Chan urged Beijing to set a "reasonable time frame" for the introduction of universal suffrage in Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post reported Friday.
Chan said he would prefer a top-down approach to a bottom-up one, as Hong Kong people would be made to look foolish if all their decisions were vetoed by the central government.
Chan, a liberal-minded businessman who has good relations with Beijing, said the central government's silence since its April ruling against universal suffrage by 2007 had spread unease among politicians and forced people to second-guess Beijing.
Since that ruling most Hong Kong politicians, both liberal and conservative, have said they would seek direct elections of the chief executive in the following term, in 2012. The central government has given no indication as to whether it would veto such a decision were the Hong Kong government and legislature to approve it.
© Copyright 2004 by United Press International
