History
The Legislative Council of Hong Kong was set up in 1843 as a colonial legislature under British rule. Hong Kong's first constitution, in the form of Queen Victoria's Letters Patent which was entitled the Charter of the Colony of Hong Kong, authorized the establishment of the Legislative Council to advise the Governor's administration. The Council had four Official members when it was first established.
The first direct elections of the Legislative Council were held in 1991. The Legislative Council became a fully elected legislature for the first time in its history in 1995.
To prepare for the handover of the sovereignty of Hong Kong from the British government to the Chinese government, a Provisional Legislative Council was established by the Preparatory Committee for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) under the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China in 1996. The Provisional Legislative Council, in operation from January 1997 to June 1998, initially held its meetings in Shenzhen. The Legislative Council of the HKSAR was established in 1998 under The Basic Law of the HKSAR. The first meeting of the Council was held in July of the same year in Hong Kong. Since The Basic Law came into effect, four Legislative Council elections have been held, with the most recent election being held in September 2008. A by-election was held in May 2010. The fifth election is being held on 9 September 2012. (Xinhua)
Read more about this topic: Legislative Council Of Hong Kong
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“I believe my ardour for invention springs from his loins. I can’t say that the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”
—Caresse Crosby (1892–1970)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)