WE have recently seen the results of the court case between the expatriate civil servants and the Government in which the courts appear to be saying, in very polite terms, that it is all right to ignore the provisions of the Bill of Rights when the Government is under pressure from powerful trade unions whose power it may not be expedient for them to challenge.
In parallel, we also see the Government pushing through a Data Privacy Ordinance, which includes a clause whereby it appears to be illegal to send personal data to a country which does not have equivalent legal protection for information about people. The Government then promptly says that it will share the CVs of its top civil servants with Beijing in order to ease their meetings during the process of transition. This sharing of personal data would appear to fly in the face of the requirements of new ordinance.
Are we seeing the creation of a new precept of Hong Kong's common law which effectively says that 'might is right when dealing with the Government'? NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED