A witch-hunt
Are you or were you ever the owner of a home with an illegal structure? That's how McCarthyite this whole business of illegal additions to homes has become. Journalists are scouring the city for illegal structures at the homes of politicians and government officials. It's rich pickings. What's next - neighbours ratting on each other? If you want to get back at your neighbour, now is your chance. Just call the Buildings Department.
The highest-profile figure caught out so far is Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, who owns a Mid-Levels flat with a glassed-in balcony. It's been glassed in for years, but no one cared until now. A witch-hunt is under way and someone ratted on Tsang. If you have nothing better to do, go and spy outside any building with balconies. Most will have been glassed in to create extra living space. Maybe we should all become spies and report illegal structures. It'll keep our overpaid bureaucrats busy.
Much as I loathe the arrogance of some of our bureaucrats, I prefer to be sane about this madness. It started off as a worthy cause - to expose the government's double standards in dealing with rural versus urban illegal structures. That cause has morphed into a monster - a witch-hunt for important people with illegal structures, big or small, dangerous or not. Some do deserve to be nailed, such as education minister Michael Suen Ming-yeung, who, even as housing chief five years ago, ignored an order from his own department to dismantle an illegal extension at his home until he was recently caught out. But exposing glassed-in balconies? Hong Kong has more of them than not.
Now that Tsang has been ridiculed into restoring his balcony to its original state, what next? Must all tens of thousands of other offenders follow? If not, how would it be fair on Tsang? You can argue that, as leader, he must set an example. But examples are set for others to follow.
If you want to point fingers, point them at Secretary for Development Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor. Her grating arrogance fanned the bonfire we're now feeding with our witch-hunt. It didn't start as much of a mess; the Ombudsman's revelations that officials treated rural illegal structures far more leniently than urban ones weren't exactly new.
But when, one by one, revelations surfaced of illegal structures at the rural homes of prominent people, Lam took us for fools by keeping up a drumbeat of denying any double standards, using bureaucrat-speak to justify leniency towards rural illegal structures. That fuelled the insatiable fire that is now raging. It's Lam's job to douse the fire. But she's slunk into the shadows instead.
How do you snuff out a fire fed by illegal structures when every other Hong Kong home has one? Pre- and post-handover governments have been so gutless in dealing with illegal structures -shutting their eyes instead of taking hard decisions- that they have proliferated beyond a point that allows a happy solution. Declare an amnesty? That would infuriate those who have had to dismantle them. Ban all future ones? That's double standards. Go after the urban -or rural- ones first? More double standards. It's a can with an endless supply of worms.
