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:
“I will never accept that I got a free ride. It wasn’t free at all. My ancestors were brought here against their will. They were made to work and help build the country. I worked in the cotton fields from the age of seven. I worked in the laundry for twenty- three years. I worked for the national organization for nine years. I just retired from city government after twelve-and-a- half years.”
—Johnnie Tillmon (b. 1926)
“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.”
—Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
“One of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organization is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organizations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their home-made monsters.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)