A job no one wants
WHEN former chief justice Sir Denys Roberts retired seven years ago he told those toasting his farewell: 'I received the Judiciary in good health in 1979 and I leave it in 1988 with virtually nothing achieved, save that to my credit I leave two tennis courts fully restored.' In the Judiciary's case, recent major surgery ordered by Sir Ti Liang Yang has helped treat long-standing ailments that maybe Sir Denys was unwilling to recognise.
What will it now take to restore the health of the Legal Department? As it lurches between scandals while battling to recover from a haemorrhage of its top brains, who might cure it and how? The prescriptions are as many and varied as the barristers, judges, solicitors and politicians consulted. Break it down. Build it up. Throw it money. Inject it with new blood. About the only consensus is that there must be change for the better because it cannot get any worse.
'If the Attorney-General had to resign every time there was a major problem we would go through two a year,' said one Legal Department lawyer.
'We count the days when someone isn't calling for his resignation, but there's a limit to how much Jeremy Mathews should have to carry the can.' The latest scandal over the massive fees paid to a former Legal Department lawyer, junior counsel Graham Grant, has returned the spotlight to the administration and management of Hong Kong's largest law firm, with an annual taxpayer-funded budget of more than $600 million.
The damning findings revealed in the past week after an internal investigation follow adverse conclusions from an external audit, leading to legislative councillors demanding that Mr Mathews should go.
'That should have happened a long time ago, anyway,' said one of his most ardent critics, independent legislator Emily Lau Wai-hing, who has lost count of the number of times she has lobbied for his removal from office.' But according to one officer in the Attorney-General's chambers: 'It's a bit like death: he's better than the alternative.' Colleagues describe him as an outstanding Crown Solicitor who was promoted beyond his capability. After taking over from Michael Thomas in 1988, he reputedly had innovative ideas which, had they worked, would have made him a hero. But they fell into a black hole and nothing came of them.