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AOs’ party conspires to rebel?|Lau Sai Leung

蘋果日報 2021/03/05 09:34


The criticism and struggle against Vivian Lau Lee-kwan came of her husband Chua Hoi-wai and a fictitious accusation that she “had indulged black-clad rioters to engage in developing Lennon Walls”, followed by another permanent secretary Alice Lau Yim drawn out and accused of putting on a “5-1 mask”, which was trumpeted out of proportion as “declaring her personal political stand on supporting black-clad rioters”. There is an inside story about the criticism and struggle against Lau Yim, who was the Permanent Secretary for the Chief Executive’s Office after Leung Chun-ying assumed office. That has always been an important post as the Secretary is responsible for coordinating the work of the Chief Executive with that of various ministers and permanent secretaries. Whether Lau “hindered” Leung and his team from stretching their wings is anybody’s guess.
The current cannon operator attacking the AOs(Administrative Officers)’ party is former Information Coordinator for the Office of the Chief Executive Andrew Fung Wai-kwong, who used to work with Lau. He believes that the senior government officials’ discontents rumored when Tung Chee-hwa and Leung Chun-ying, not of AO descent, being in power came from the AOs’ party, who were reluctant to collaborate with chief executives not of their same clan. He also criticizes AOs of “attaching more importance to English than Chinese language” as evidenced by the fact that first drafts of government policy documents have to be written in English, taking administrative power as their “private property”, being “the party in power in Hong Kong” as well as “the biggest secretive anti-China” party. It is believed they have been put on the national security radar. He is of the opinion that in order to crumble the AOs’ party, the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office have to compile a dossier on each of the 730 AOs, and promotions given to them in the future need to be co-signed and approved by the two offices.

AOs are conservative, not anti-China

It is not a staggering discovery at all that AOs are the party in power, which was already in practice during the colonial era. In democracies, a tense relationship between bureaucracy and politicians subsists chronically. In his book A Journey: My Political Life, former British prime minister Tony Blair castigates civil officials like what politicians from Leung Chun-ying’s camp did. In the classic BBC soap opera, Yes Minister, the plot of the story is about conflicts between Secretaries of State(politicians) and the Permanent Under-secretary of State(AO) Sir Humphrey(equivalent to the Permanent Secretary for the Chief Executive’s Office in Hong Kong). Blair puts forward in his memoir his insight into the AOs’ party embodied by Sir Humphrey. He is of the view that civil officials make every effort to maintain “the status quo that they are familiar with, understand and risks are involved if they stray from, while steering clear of menaces at all costs”. That is where the problem of civil service system in the UK lies. The accusations of being secretively anti-China, de-Sinicization and drafting documents in English against AOs are a wholly groundless story concocted out of nothing. The AOs’ party are more than capable of manipulating power behind the scenes at ease in the long-established multi-party political system in the UK, not to mention tackling a bunch of amateurish politicians in Hong Kong, aka “patriots”.
Ostensibly, officials in the accountability system(politicians) are decision makers, and permanent secretaries(AOs) are implementors, but political resources in the hands of the latter are way more than that in the former’s. The reason why documents are drafted in English is the language has been used for more than a hundred years in writing documents to be filed. The information in their hands is a weapon. If there is no permanent secretary, politicians will appear to be dreadfully ill-informed! Eddie Ng Hak-kim and permanent secretary Cherry Tse Ling Kit-ching conflicted with one another. Result? Ng was a good-for-nothing in the eyes of the masses, lawmakers and the media. The crux is not that permanent secretaries “oppose China and stir up trouble in Hong Kong”, and are not at anyone’s beck and command. On the contrary, politicians should not give orders to permanent secretaries from the top down like what bosses do in private corporations. In the UK, Secretaries of State mostly act upon suggestions given by Permanent Under-secretaries of State or else they will find it extremely hard to make a move. Politicians come and go, but AO is a life-long job. Approximately, 50 AOs service 700 civilians. Interdepartmental meetings of AOs over decades have fostered a set of techniques for intercommunication and information screening to cope with politicians. If AOs do not act as counselors, officials in the accountability system will just keep bungling their work, then become figureheads good for nothing.
AOs’ conservatism and propensity to maintain the status quo is in fact a built-in force in the government to check and balance various “political reforms” initiated by politicians. The final advice from late Governor of Hong Kong MacLehose in 1982 before he left his post is: “Make sure your decision can get out of the Governor House.” Even reformist MacLehose was kept in check by the colonial civil officials. The so-called “AOs’ party conspiring to rebel”, which is made out of nothing, is just another unjust political accusation in the Hong Kong Cultural Revolution.
(Lau Sai Leung, political commentator)
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