after the election, the british government replaced david wilson with chris patten as the last governor of hong kong. in his inaugural policy address, patten proposed a bold electoral reform proposal which broadened the franchise of the nine newly created functional constituencies. patten's proposal received strong opposition from the beijing authorities. in response to the beijing's strong stance, the united democrats saw the need to unite with the moderate democrats, and therefore merged with the meeting point to form the democratic party in 1994. in the mutual understanding between szeto wah and martin lee, lee was the chairman of the party while szeto was in charge of the alliance. nonetheless, szeto was given as the unofficial position of "party whip" due to his seniority without much actual power.