Action to Make Select Tag Options Drop Down

I’m creating a multi-dropdown like this:

The outer box is a select tag (styled without the arrow etc), and the inner boxes are inline divs with a margin-top of -30px.

I’d like the user to be able to click on the text “North”, “East” etc and have the dropdown of the select box appear. So I have put this on the p tag containing that text to give focus to the select tag:

dmx-on:click="f_contact.i_contact_regions.focus()"

which makes the nice border appear to show the select tag has focus, but doesn’t make the options drop down.

Is there something I can do to make the options drop down too?

Thanks!

Antony.