A development deal not to be sniffed at
WHAT is the best job in Hong Kong at the moment? No, it's not selling anti-missile insurance to travellers to Taiwan, or even judging the Miss Hong Kong contest. Instead, if the flood of interest from senior government officials is anything to go by, it's running the Trade Development Council on a salary package of up to $3 million a year, with limitless opportunities for overseas travel and a guaranteed ticket on the through-train beyond 1997.
Executive Director Francis Lo Wing-chan steps down later this year and headhunters Russell Reynolds Associates have been hired to find a successor.
By all accounts, Secretary for the Civil Service Michael Sze Cho-cheung - generally believed to be top of Beijing's hit-list - was the first off the mark, privately expressing interest several months before the post was even advertised, in late June.
Now other senior civil servants have also thrown their hats into the ring including, according to the government grapevine, Secretary for Trade and Industry Brian Chau Tak-hay - although he angrily denies this.
In any case Mr Sze, a former Director of Trade, already seems to have the job sewn-up. The headhunters are said to have shortlisted him, and he is cheerily encouraging speculation that his days in government are numbered.
All of which is causing no small degree of annoyance over at the TDC, where they've yet to see the shortlist, and are only finding out who is on it through calls from the press.
OVER at Apple Daily, proprietor Jimmy Lai Chee-ying must be biting his nails as the unsold copies pile up in the 7-Elevens across town, now that he's made his peace with the newspaper hawkers by raising the price to $5.
Mr Lai apparently has more to lose than the $1 billion he invested in the paper having, in a rash moment, offered to cut off one of his fingers if the paper's circulation didn't average 200,000.
But it's unlikely he'll be doing so anytime soon. The track-record for tycoons keeping their word on such matters is not good, with Hopewell Holdings boss Gordon Wu Ying-sheung still refusing to jump in the harbour, two years after promising to do so, and Mr Lai's offer is understood to depend upon one of his senior executives also pledging to sacrifice a finger - something which none has done so far.
AS the old Chinese saying goes: 'You cannot help feeling happy when friends come to see you from a distance.' So says China Law Society President Zou Yu in his invitation welcoming 'friends of all walks of life' to join him at a LAWASIA conference in Beijing - omitting only to mention that those who take the rule of law too seriously are not welcome, as Democratic Party Chairman Martin Lee Chu-ming has discovered, having been officially barred from attending. But perhaps that is a blessing in disguise for Mr Lee, since Mr Zou's message suggests China sees the conference as little more than another means of drumming up foreign investment, urging participants to study fully 'the problem of how to realise fully the role of law' - which apparently means whether to pay any attention to it or not.
NOT only was the marathon Legislative Council session too much for its division bell, which finally broke down yesterday afternoon, forcing a hasty adjournment while it was fixed, but with the Government lobbying to get so many bills through, officials mistakenly started contradicting each other.
Not content with flooding Legco with junior civil servants, who caused many a laugh by being unable to distinguish their democrat opponents from the others, Secretary for Home Affairs Michael Suen Ming-yeung put his foot in it by telling independent legislator Marvin Cheung Kin-tung that colleague Anna Wu Hung-yuk's equal opportunities bills had to be defeated because it was wrong to rush such complicated legislation through too quickly, especially as her bill left too many matters unclear. The problem was this was precisely the line Mr Cheung and others were using to attack the Government's mandatory provident fund bill, which they claim is 'full of holes', as he gleefully explained to Deputy Secretary for Education and Manpower Jacqueline Willis - the official handling that bill - who was apparently less than happy to hear of her colleague's gaffe.
