Who's the Master?

Gladys Li Chi-hei

October 22, 2005, Ming Pao

I can quite understand why our Beijing masters have opted for a former civil servant to be the leader of the HKSAR. I can quite understand why they have bought the line about how the backbone of Hong Kong is the Civil Service and how its morale has been damaged by the Ministerial System, pay cuts and virtually anything else which you care to name.

On the whole, we do have a conscientious, hard-working body of civil servants and I have nothing but admiration for those with whom I have worked in my professional career. But our new Chief Executive seems set on entrenching the system whereby our apparent servants are in fact our masters as I read his Policy Address.

I have already written about where policies and decisions which affect every aspect of our lives are made in Hong Kong. They are not made by you and me or our elected representatives. They are made by our 'servants'.

The 'servants' may like to pretend that we are their masters by being civil and servile but they decide how much we shall pay them, how many we should employ, what they should do or not do and guess what, they are virtually undismissable. They write the terms of employment. A system of 'cheques but no balance'.

When, as their nominal masters, we ask them why they haven't performed the service we thought they were already supposed to be performing so that the food we put on our tables is fit to eat, what's the response? "We need a new Department". Just count up the additional warm bodies who we will have to pay for to fulfill the initiatives in the Policy Address in the name of 'Strong Governance'.

Our chief servant who is the Chief Executive and who is supposedly accountable to the HKSAR under article 43 of the Basic Law has made it clear that he is not going to cut civil servant numbers nor to embark on the reform of the Civil Service. If he is truly our servant, he should be working diligently on both, pruning from the top and not at the level of front-line services. He can't finish the task in the short time left to him but he can certainly start it.