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Chief executive unveils new cabinet, says ministerial system will finally work

Donald Tsang Yam-kuen yesterday unveiled the team that will lead Hong Kong's third post-handover administration, and said the teething troubles of the ministerial system were over.

Calling his ministers pragmatic, professional and committed, he said they would help him carry out his election pledges.

Mr Tsang said the cabinet's five priorities would be maintaining Hong Kong's development as an international  financial centre, keeping up the pace of infrastructure development, alleviating poverty, improving quality of life   and charting  the path to attaining universal suffrage.

Eight of his current ministerial team will stay on in the new cabinet, some with new roles.

'This will help us ensure stability and continuity, as well as add some new blood to our governing team,' Mr Tsang said.

Of six new recruits, four are serving or former civil servants and another is a long-serving government policy adviser. Six incumbents have a civil service background.

That drew criticism from some politicians.

Liberal Party leader James Tien Pei-chun said the cabinet would be civil servants wearing ministers' hats, and would largely be carrying out Mr Tsang's orders.

But Secretary for the Civil Service Denise Yue Chung-yee said there had been a big advance in establishing mutual trust between ministers and civil servants, and that would continue under the new administration.

The chief executive said his would be a listening administration. He had asked the new team  'to reach out to the community, to talk with the general public, to feel the pulse of society and to embrace public sentiment'.

The appointments, announced after Xinhua reported Beijing's approval of Mr Tsang's nominees, contained no surprises.

Henry Tang Ying-yen succeeds Rafael Hui Si-yan as chief secretary, with John Tsang Chun-wah re-entering the cabinet to take Mr Tang's current job. Wong Yan-lung stays on as justice minister.

Of the newcomers, Chan Ka-keung, a business professor at the University of Science and Technology, is the lone outsider. He takes over the financial services portfolio. Tsang Tak-sing, a leftist jailed during the 1967 riots, leaves his role with the Central Policy Unit, a government think-tank, to become secretary for home affairs.

The most junior of the civil service recruits, Edward Yau Tang-wah, 47, will head a new Environment Bureau.

Among other key appointments announced yesterday were a new customs chief and new ICAC commissioner. Banker Norman Chan Tak-lam, another former civil servant who played key roles in the chief executive's two election campaigns, will take John Tsang's job as head of the Chief Executive's Office.

Donald Tsang said he believed that, after a lot of challenges, the ministerial system would now work as intended and  ministers could fit  in with civil servants.

Liberal Party leader Mr Tien was not the only politician critical of the new cabinet. Democratic Party leader Albert Ho Chun-yan said he had reservations about the dominance of former civil servants, and feared the civil service would be drained of talent if its best people left to take up political appointments.

He urged the government to review the ministerial  system.

Emily Lau Wai-hing, of The Frontier, was also disappointed by the  dominance of  ex-civil servants. She said it showed there was no initiative on the part of the government to pursue party politics.

Even as the new team was being unveiled, Mr Tang and John Tsang faced questions about whether they were already eyeing the race to succeed Donald Tsang in 2012. Each denied that was so, and pledged to work with the other and with their colleagues.



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