CE: Foreign passport declaration is basic information

Carrie Lam has confirmed that election committee candidates will have to declare whether or not they or their spouse owns a foreign or British National Overseas passport, saying that this was “very basic” information.

The chief executive made the comments in response to a question over reports that some ex-officio members of the election committee saying they received forms requiring them to make this declaration.

When asked to explain the rationale behind this requirement, Lam cited the electoral reform law passed in May, and that one of the provisions in the decisions made by the national people’s congress was to ensure there is a “well-instituted system to review the eligibility of the candidates”.

“Somebody will feel that since they are ex-officio – for example by virtue of their status as deputy to the national people’s congress or CPPCC member – that it should be taken for granted that they will fulfill the patriotic requirement. But in order to ensure equity in application of the candidate review process, everyone who will have a seat in the 1,500 election committee will have to go through the same process.”

She added that the CE-appointed candidate eligibility review committee will meet later this week, and that in order to assist them with their work, they will need to collate facts about candidates to decide wh

So this process involves the setting up of a candidate eligibility review committee which I have appointed which will meet shortly this week to determine whether or not they will be accepted as a member of the election committee, or even as a candidate to run in an election or member of an election committee sub-sector.

“In the process of collating the information, of course we need information from the individual, because that is the first-hand information that any candidate who wants to be a member of the election committee has to provide some information about his own personal particulars, about other things that we need to know,” she said, adding that they have designed a form for the candidate to declare whether or not they or their spouse has a foreign or BNO passport.

“This is very basic, we want to know about the spouse of the candidate as well, and we ask whether you have another nationality or whether you are in possession of a BNO passport. So these are all collated for the purpose of the review by the candidate eligibility review committee.”