Organization
The 60-member Provisional Legislative Council was elected in 1996 by block vote by the 400 member Selection Committee, an electoral college handpicked by the PRC. It met in the city of Shenzhen across the border, until it replaced the Legislative Council upon the transfer of sovereignty. The term of the PLC lasted until the first legislative elections in 1998.
Until the handover, the PLC had no legal standing in Hong Kong and acted as a transition body for the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
In the first five months prior to the handover, the PLC was involved in transition work towards replacing the British legislature:
- devising a new electoral system to govern polls for the SAR’s first Legislative
- appointment of top judges to Hong Kong's new courts
- review and sanction of the 1997-1998 budget
- voting on proposals by the Preparatory Committee to amend or repeal some of the pre-existent Hong Kong laws
Read more about this topic: Provisional Legislative Council
Famous quotes containing the word organization:
“Politics, as a practise, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The village had institutionalized all human functions in forms of low intensity.... Participation was high and organization was low. This is the formula for stability.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)