Where did CE wagon go off the rails?
Only four months ago it looked a neat circus act. Two dancing bears, Henry and CY enter the ring and begin their routines. They check regularly with the ring master for approval. A third untrained bear, Ho, securely chained, is allowed in to add drama. The audience knows the story. The act is predictable but vaguely entertaining like familiar Cantonese opera. The hero known by all beforehand, will emerge victorious from the noise and distraction.
But for the raucous, unruly press of Hong Kong, the circus would have played to script. It was not to be. The editors took a keen interest in the candidates who wished to rule HK. They searched their past and their present for clues to who they really are, what drives them to seek such power, who is behind them and why.
Tang plays more than women and wine cellars
The Ming Pao newspaper first disclosed the illegal construction beneath candidate Tang’s twin mansions in Kowloon Tong. Tang was the administration’s second most senior officer when the government initiated a long-overdue clampdown on unauthorised structures to property. Chief executive Donald Tsang asked his team to make sure they were clean on this. Henry decided not to reveal his underground secret.
It now appears Tang could have submitted false building plans for approval, omitting the grand basement complex below his swimming pool. He would have required an architect to sign off on the planning submissions. There is a trail of professional breach of code and trust. It was fraud.
His pattern of response to misdemeanours has been to deny wrongdoing, then fudge the issue and when caught, find a scapegoat. Then become contrite, ask for a second chance and promise good behaviour. But vote for him please.
Even more serious than his extra-marital affairs and illegal construction work, was his clumsy attempt to pin the 2003 Harbour Fest fiasco on civil servant Mike Rowse. That backfired when Rowse sought a judicial review which found for him in 2008. Tang had asked for minutes of meetings to be deleted which were material to any inquiry. The government’s internal inquiry in 2004 pinned blame on Rowse and docked a month’s salary following its disciplinary process.
Tang chaired the Economic Relaunch Strategy Group set up to revive the economy after the SARS scare in 2003. The HK Government had underwritten up to HK$100million of the Harbour Fest program whose main organizer was the American Chamber of Commerce. That had to be paid out in full when the event overran its HK$1 billion budget by HK$13.3 million.
The “Accountability System” which Tung Chee-hwa the first CE put into place to justify political appointments, was nowhere to be seen as Tang and his boss Tsang evaded responsibility.
Chief executive on junkets with oligarchs
The Sun, a free tabloid of the Oriental Daily Group caught current chief executive Donald Tsang wining, dining and luxury yachting with tycoons and mobster bosses in Macau over the weekend. That forced Tsang to stage a homely interview with RTHK for primetime news channels, portraying himself as a humble civil servant on a much needed break with friends. He denied being a luxury private plane and yacht beneficiary, enjoying the high life with tycoons and gambling godfathers, as the territory’s press would have him.
The South China Morning Post front paged drawings of the three floors of Donald’s luxury complex in Shenzen across the border where he says he will retire when his term ends in June. A local architect who commented on the plans in the report, observed that a 300sf garden seems to have been added after the building plans were approved by the authorities - which in HK would be regarded an illegal structure.
Independent press a nuisance
Both Tang and Tsang would have dearly loved a situation where media know their place and are afraid of political strongmen. Where editors would self-censor or can be fired. Where publishers can be instructed to suppress information. Where newspapers can be licensed and their right to publish cancelled on edict.
There is little else to check the abuse of the oligarchs, their collaborators in government and ideologues eager to turn the territory into a police state.
Hong Kong needs to be wary of the next chief executive resurrecting the discarded Article 23 Security legislation which seeks to curb the freedoms of press, assembly, protest and distribution of information. And of legislators who will rubber stamp it.
Once such a dangerous law is allowed onto the Statutes, it will be near impossible to get rid of it.
ENDS
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