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HKU Centre for Comparative and Public Law Upcoming Events on Constitutional Reform and Democratic Development in Hong Kong

14 Mar 2014

The Centre for Comparative and Public Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong (“CCPL”) will host a series of events during the months of March and April of 2014.

The upcoming events include:

Academic Roundtable: “Universal Suffrage and Nomination Procedures: Imperatives from Article 25 ICCPR” on 20 March 2014;
Political Reform Proposals Seminar Series on 3, 8, 16, 22, and 29 April 2014; and
Panel Discussion on Hong Kong Basic Law and Civil Nomination on 9 April 2014.

The CCPL will be holding a press conference to publicise these upcoming events. Details are as follows:
Date: March 17, 2014 (Monday)
Time: 11am
Venue: 11/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong.

All interested media personnel and outlets are invited to attend. Please kindly register with Ms. Joyce Fung at joycef@hku.hk if you will be in attendance. For other enquiries, please contact Ms. Sharron Fast at sfast@hku.hk.

More about the upcoming events:
As a research centre on comparative and public law, given the importance of this historic moment in Hong Kong's democratic development, the CCPL has positioned itself to conduct and host a series of events that will serve as a platform for conversations on the constitutional reform exercise. Specifically, the CCPL hopes to add academic rigour as well as international and comparative dimensions to the discussion to help advance the conversation and cultivate genuine and open debate on issues that have recently dominated public discussion. To serve this end, the CCPL has put together a program that invites international and local experts as well as proposers of various models for constitutional reform, including members of the Governments Constitutional Reform Taskforce, to engage with the community at large to elucidate the proposals that have been advanced thus far, to understand their content and to evaluate them in light of the Hong Kong Basic Law and our international commitments.

Academic Roundtable: “Universal Suffrage and Nomination Procedures: Imperatives from Article 25 ICCPR” on 20 March 2014, the University of Hong Kong, 9 am – 6pm, 11/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, University of Hong Kong

In light of the impending electoral reforms in Hong Kong, the Roundtable aims to garner the reflections of international and local experts on the requirements of equal and universal suffrage as expressed in Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. These insights will be used to develop a set of Guiding Principles, which can serve as a basis to evaluate proposed models of reform for electing the Chief Executive and members of the Legislative Council in Hong Kong from 2017 onwards emerging from the ongoing public consultation exercise.

Leading academics, judges and representatives from human rights bodies, prominent local politicians and political commentators, legal practitioners, government officials and NGO personnel will participate in this event. The proceedings will be moderated by Yash Ghai, constitutional expert and Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong to help facilitate the discussion of the key considerations from a variety of perspectives. Professor Ghai has served formerly as the Chair of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission, the head of the Constitution Advisory Support Unit of the United Nations Development Programme in Nepal, as a Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Cambodia and as Chairperson of Fiji's Constitutional Committee.

The roundtable will cover 3 major themes:

Requirements of ICCPR article 25 in terms of nomination procedures in elections;
Compatibility of various proposals for electing the Chief Executive in Hong Kong with ICCPR article 25; and
Coming up with a set of principles that should guide the design of nomination procedures in democratic elections in general.

The roundtable will be conducted in English.

The event will be live-streamed to a limited audience. Details on live-streaming will be provided upon request. For specific enquiries on interviews with expert Panelists, please contact sfast@hku.hk (Tel: 852 3917 1938). For general and background information, including the latest programme and details of participants, please visit the Roundtable webpage at: http://www.law.hku.hk/ccpl/events/Article25ICCPR.html

Political Reform Proposals Seminar Series on 3, 8, 16, 22, and 29 April 2014, 5:30-7:30pm, 11/F, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, University of Hong Kong

For this series, the CCPL has extended invitations to all those who have proposed models for electing the Chief Executive in 2017 to come and explain their proposals to the public with a view to further elucidating their proposals and to offer insights as to why their models are appropriate for Hong Kong at this juncture. The seminars will each comprise presentations by 3 to 4 proposers of their own models, followed by Questions and Answers from the audience. These seminars will be open to the public although they will require registration by email (RSVP joycef@hku.hk) to facilitate planning at the venue. The purpose of this series is to offer a platform for engagement with members of the university community on the various proposals that have been publicized since the announcement of the public consultation exercise.

The seminars will be conducted in Cantonese.

Panel Discussion on Hong Kong Basic Law and Civil Nomination on 9 April 2014, 5:30-7:30pm, 2/F Large Moot Court, Cheng Yu Tung Tower, University of Hong Kong.

In light of the current heated discussions on civil nominations and requirements of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the CCPL is organising a Panel Discussion to serve as an impartial and organised platform for leading figures who have expressed views on this topic to explain their views. We aim to fully manifest the spirit of rational discourse, which the CCPL is committed to enhancing at this crucial stage of Hong Kong’s constitutional development.

There will be 4 panelists in the discussion. Two of the confirmed speakers are the Hon. Secretary for Justice, Mr. Rimsky Yuen and Mr. Benny Tai, Associate Professor of Law, HKU.

These seminars will be open to current staff and students of the University although they will require registration by email (RSVP joycef@hku.hk) to facilitate planning at the venue.

The panel discussion will be conducted in Cantonese.

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