Functional constituency (Hong Kong)
Industry constituency representing mostly cooperation owners at the Hong Kong legislative assembly
In the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, a functional constituency (FC; Chinese: 功能界別 and formerly 功能組別 before handover of Hong Kong) is a seat representing professional or special interest groups. Eligible voters in a functional constituency may include natural persons as well as other designated legal entities such as organisations and corporations. The functional constituency has long been criticised to be undemocratic and not representative, with persistent calls from the pro-democracy camp to abolish all of them for a genuine universal suffrage to elect the legislature.
History
The concept of functional constituencies (FC) in Hong Kong was first developed in the release of "Green Paper: A Pattern of District Administration in Hong Kong" on 18 July 1984 when indirect elections were introduced to the Legislative Council for the first time. The paper suggested that the Legislative Council create 24 seats with 12 seats from different professional interest groups elected through 11 functional constituencies (one of them, the Labour constituency, was allocated two seats). The eleven constituencies include those elected by HKGCC (for First Commercial), CGCC (for Second Commercial), FHKI (for First Industrial), CMAHK (for Second Industrial), HKAB (for Financial), HKCSS (for Social Services), and HKMA (for Medical).
In 1988, the Financial constituency was enlarged into Financial and Accountancy constituencies and the Medical constituency was enlarged into Medical and Health Care constituencies respectively. In 1991, the functional constituencies were more developed. With 9 directly elected geographical constituencies created, 20 functional constituencies consisting of 11 types of industry in which 7 new functional constituencies including Rural (elected by Heung Yee Kuk and later renamed as so), Urban Council and Regional Council were also set up.
In 1992, Chris Patten suggested additional political reform that adds nine additional functional constituencies (Chinese: 新九組) with a much expanded voter base to the existing system.
“Functional constituency (Hong Kong)” enters the record as industry constituency representing mostly cooperation owners at the Hong Kong legislative assembly. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Functional, constituency and Hong can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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