Compromises needed to overcome HK’s ingrained problems
The Legislative Council elections have been postponed for a year on public health grounds, and that has proved controversial. Putting the controversy on one side, let us make the best possible use of this year. Consideration can be given to legislation for postal or other forms of distance voting to minimize the disruption a similar situation might cause in the future. It would, however, be valuable also to use this time for reflection and to understand the sequence of events that have contributed to the polarization of our community.
Back in the 1980s when the Basic Law was drawn up, the state of Hong Kong was regarded as pretty much optimal. To quite an extent, the aim was to ensure that all the features that made Hong Kong so successful would be preserved and taken into the future. It may seem hard to believe nowadays, but the civil service was considered to be one of those factors. Thus, it was envisaged that after Hong Kong’s return to China, the SAR government would be “executive-led”. The most common description of civil servants is “bureaucratic”, and the usual image is of someone who rather soullessly enforces rules on the basis of precedents. The fact of the matter, though, is that Hong Kong civil servants had to be master politicians too. This was, perhaps, most obvious in the work of the District Officers, who were required to be adept at balancing different factions within their local area as well as assessing sentiment on topical issues and reflecting it back to the higher levels of government who would then be able to plan on the basis of knowledge of the likely public reaction toward their policies.
In the colonial era, even the governors had to be this kind of politician. Originally, all members of the Legislative Council were appointed and a wise governor would ensure a reasonable representation across the political and social spectrum, even including some who could be expected to be constructive critics. It was then up to the governor and his team to use their skills and personality to manage this group of talented individuals. An essential part of this strategy was to convince LegCo members of the need to put aside personal differences to work together for the good of Hong Kong. All the same, all the governors until the last one, Chris Patten, were by background civil servants of one kind or the other, initially from the Colonial Service and latterly from the Foreign Service.
Chris Patten was unlike previous governors in that his political views were clear and known. He was a democrat and was willing to push relations with the Chinese mainland in pursuance of his philosophy and, indeed, to jeopardize the agreement reached between Britain and China on the details of Hong Kong’s handover. In the event, the settlement was preserved although there were years of uneasy relations in the run-up to 1997. It could be argued that those years were contributing factors in creating the fissures that are visible today and proved not helpful in advancing our democratic development. It was as if Hong Kong was already falling into two camps, with extremely different views. The governor did not make things any easier. This would not have mattered if Hong Kong had a political system like that in the United Kingdom and other comparable places where such differences can be thrashed out in the normal political give-and-take of debate. But it did not and, on the contrary, it had been implicitly assumed that Hong Kong would be governed in a spirit of neutral problem solving rather than the dingdong argumentation, characteristic of adversarial politics.
Over subsequent years, attitudes hardened on all sides so that politicians and their followers seem completely unable to find any common ground with the “other side”. Reaching across the aisle in LegCo to find solutions has become unheard of. The past two years have been very hard even for resilient Hong Kong. The hard years now lead to hard choices: whether to give up, to move out or to accept that we must live in a state of sullen resentment, with enmity always bubbling below the surface. There is another option that would be much more difficult to achieve: the forging of a common way forward in the interests of the whole of Hong Kong, particularly its economically disadvantaged who have been overlooked for so long. It will be difficult because it will require an agreement to put aside minor differences and to compromise on major ones. The starting point must be a willingness to dissociate economic and social issues from advancing the respective faction’s political agenda. It would be challenging but worthwhile to try for the greater good. Is anyone up for this challenge?
The starting point must be a willingness to dissociate economic and social issues from advancing the respective faction’s political agenda. It would be challenging but worthwhile to try for the greater good.