【明報專訊】The Incident

Scholarism (學民思潮), a group of secondary and tertiary students, is now campaigning for the popular nomination (公民提名) of Chief Executive candidates in 2017, when Hong Kong people are to elect their Chief Executive by universal suffrage (普選).

Their proposal is that a person who clinches the support of no fewer than 100,000 registered voters may stand in the Chief Executive election. The group has launched a campaign to promote this idea, and has been inviting political parties to sign a charter (約章).

Scholarism's suggestion has come against a backdrop of intense debate over the 2017 CE election. The Occupy Central (佔領中環) campaign is picking up steam, while the Alliance for True Democracy (真普選聯盟), a group of pro-democracy lawmakers and scholars, has put forward three proposals about the CE election, two of which also involve popular nomination.

Earlier this month the Civic Party (公民黨) conducted a survey. Of the 1,117 registered voters interviewed, 53% supported the popular nomination idea.