Our recent reflections on the "hollowing out" of the prosecutions division in the Department of Justice have drawn comments from some of our readers. We had called attention to the shortage of senior prosecutors and the problem this caused in appointing a replacement for Kevin Zervos when he steps down as Director of Public Prosecutions in the not too distant future.
Indeed, former DPP Grenville Cross highlighted the problem in an open letter to the incoming secretary of justice published in the South China Morning Post some months ago. In what he described as an "unprecedented exodus", he said that in 2009, "the division was led by six Senior Counsel, now only one remains. Seven other directorate-level prosecutors have also departed in that time. Moreover, during the past year, the two newly appointed deputy directors of public prosecutions have resigned, within just months of their appointments".
However, readers have argued that this weakness in the prosecutions division, along with the chronic shortage of judges, is more by design than by accident. Indeed one goes so far as to write that this weakness stems from "government antipathy towards strengthening the institutions of state which have the potential to, and frequently are called upon to, fetter/oversee executive action".
He goes on to say: "The entirely calculated downgrading in the status of the judiciary over the past 15 years, both in terms of the loss of precedence and in terms of the consistently underwhelming remuneration/working facilities under which judges had to labour (now apparently beginning belatedly to be recognised given the embarrassing recent failure to attract suitable candidates), has had the entirely desired effect of weakening the crucial judicial element within government, and placing the administration - otherwise unfettered by an unrepresentative and internally divided, and thus necessarily weak, legislature - in a position unmerited by the less than stellar quality of the civil service bureaucrats and a Chief Executive clearly beholden to Beijing."
If this seems far fetched, it is worth noting that the Department of Justice is not the only arm of government that has arguably undergone a calculated downgrading. In 2005, the roles of the director of environmental protection and the permanent secretary for the environment were merged. The director was a career environmental scientist who, among other matters, presided over the statutory environmental impact assessment studies that have to be conducted for infrastructure projects such as the controversial Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge. The permanent secretary, on the other hand, is a career civil servant charged with carrying out government policy.
It's not hard to see that merging the roles and putting a civil servant in charge undermines the work of the department, particularly when it comes to assessing projects that the government deems essential.