A week before his retirement as director of broadcasting of RTHK in early February, Franklin Wong Wah-kay made an upbeat prediction.
He said the government-funded broadcaster had entered an 'exciting epoch'. His successor, he said, would have to deal only with 'happy troubles'.
His successor, Roy Tang Yun-kwong, has been on the job less than a week and his troubles seem anything but happy. Tang's selection on September 9 sparked a barrage of criticism from the RTHK staff union, journalists' organisations and academics. They fear a career civil servant with no broadcast experience who has been 'parachuted' in to RTHK will undermine the station's independence.
Last Thursday, his first day at the office, the former deputy secretary for labour and welfare was met by dozens of protesters when he arrived at the station's headquarters in Kowloon Tong. Rolling out a black carpet for the new director, the protesters demanded the government withdraw Tang's appointment and choose someone through internal promotion. Tang gamely said he didn't mind the protest and promised that RTHK wouldn't lose any of its editorial independence.
Whatever he thought of his welcome, Tang had to know that troubles - happy or not - are nothing new to RTHK.
The station has come under attack from Beijing loyalists irritated by public affairs programmes critical of the Hong Kong government. They say that as a government-funded station, RTHK should promote government policies.
At a Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference sub-group meeting in March 1998, then standing committee member Xu Simin criticised Headliner, a popular RTHK's political satire programme, as a 'weird' show that attacked the mainland and Hong Kong governments and vilified Tung Chee-hwa, then the chief executive. Xu urged Tung to take more control.