This was my decision: Hong Kong’s chief executive takes responsibility for scaling back housing project
Leung Chun-ying made declaration over controversial handling of rural housing scheme in awkward press conference with financial secretary
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying took direct responsibility for the partial suspension of a housing project at the centre of a political storm, facing the media yesterday with his finance minister by his side after signs of a rift between them.
In an awkward hour-long press conference, Leung and Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah barely made eye contact. While Leung put on a brave face, observers noted, Tsang looked sullen in front of the cameras for the first time after distancing himself from the controversy.
Leung and his top officials took pains to explain their roles as they denied bowing to pressure from rural leaders with vested interests when they decided to phase the building of 17,000 public housing flats and defer a fat part of it in Wang Chau, Yuen Long.
Pan-democrat lawmakers and their newly elected localist allies were far from satisfied, and vowed to push for a formal investigation.
“This was my decision – the decision to carry out the development of the public housing programme in phases,” Leung said. “Because as the chief executive of the government, I have to take charge.”
After a media report forced him to confirm he had chaired a task force on Wang Chau in 2013, a month before officials started “soft lobbying” rural leaders for support, Leung brought Tsang into the controversy by identifying the financial secretary’s Steering Committee on Land Supply as the body that followed up the details of the project.