Seeking straight answers

The easy way to settle the question of why former director of immigration Laurence Leung Ming-yin took early and sudden retirement on July 5 last year might be to accept his own initial explanation. Four days after the event, he told reporters he had stepped down because of mental exhaustion, partly provoked by the murder of his daughter in Canada two years earlier. Looking 'frail and tired', as the South China Morning Post put it at the time, he insisted he had decided to go for 'personal, mainly health reasons'. Offering acceptance and a little sympathy might be the easy way out. But it is not the way the Legislative Council Select Committee inquiring into his departure is likely to pursue the matter when Mr Leung appears before them on Friday. His claim was not believed at the time, and has since been worn threadbare by the Government's determined, but counter-productive efforts to cover his tracks. Whether Mr Leung's new testimony this week will take the investigation any further remains to be seen. But legislators are determined this is one sleeping dog that must not be allowed to lie. Almost since the moment of his resignation there have been rumours about what lay behind it, some of them published in the press here and in Britain, others only the subject of barroom gossip. Some of these were raised under Legislative Council privilege by committee member Selina Chow Liang Shuk-yee. She said the way the Government had handled the case had led to a number of allegations, among them that Mr Leung had disclosed the nationalities of principal government officials and passed a list of British passport holders to the Chinese Government, had leaked information on Chinese dissidents and increased the number of one-way entry permits issued to mainlanders without prior approval from the Hong Kong Government. As director of immigration, he would certainly have had access to extremely sensitive information of this kind and considerable powers to decide which foreign or Chinese nationals were permitted to enter or remain in Hong Kong. Yet it is far from clear what controls would have been in place to prevent him abusing such access or passing it on illegally. Another committee member, Christine Loh Kung-wai, said the committee should at least be asking Mr Leung this week why he should be quietly allowing his name to be dragged through the gutter in this way. 'These are extraordinary rumours,' she said. 'These are rumours you just can't make up. They are the worst.' The Government has stated publicly that there is 'no truth in any of these allegations'. But that may simply mean no one has yet put his finger on the exact nature of Mr Leung's misdemeanour if there was one. It does not necessarily mean Mr Leung has done nothing wrong. The absence of any concrete information has encouraged speculation and the Government's failure to defend Mr Leung or provide a solid character reference for him has fuelled the fire. On the contrary, the Government, from Chris Patten down, has consistently managed to damn Mr Leung with faint praise. To quote Mr Leung's immediate superior, Secretary for Security Peter Lai Hing-ling in his evidence to the Select Committee: 'Over the years we have maintained, I believe to be, a cordial working relationship. I cannot claim to be a personal friend of Mr Leung since I don't actually know him personally all that well . . . 'Perhaps it may be a criticism of me, but I mean, I am . . . there . . . I do, I do not believe that I can get along with Mr Leung.' The Financial Secretary, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, rather disarmingly avoided confirming that Mr Leung had an unblemished record of distinguished service by arguing that no civil servant had such a record. 'I don't think I have an unblemished record,' he told the Select Committee. Mr Tsang also pointed out that in his press statement on Mr Leung's retirement he had said 'the acting chief secretary also thanked Mr Laurence Leung for his dedicated service in the Immigration Department in the past 31 years'. Praise given to colleagues was usually 'of a cryptic kind', he added. It was a tradition of the service. Yet, according to Ms Loh, the financial secretary looked acutely uncomfortable while he was saying all this. 'He really squirmed,' she said. But perhaps the best known piece of faint praise came from the Governor himself. After he had described Mr Leung's successor Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee as an 'excellent director', he was offered the opportunity to describe the former immigration boss in similar terms. Instead, in a remark worthy of a dictionary of insults, Mr Patten replied, 'I would say he worked for many years for the Hong Kong Government.' Ms Loh said the complete absence of compassion from government now made it impossible for her to accept Mr Leung's excuse, although she had been sympathetic enough at the time. But it was the manner of Mr Leung's retirement which first aroused suspicion. The immigration chief's departure was not the graceful, slightly regretful exit of a man tired out by a demanding job at a time of personal bereavement. Not even an officer in the midst of a nervous breakdown is 'allowed' to leave the most senior ranks of the civil service with immediate effect, as he was. The standard requirement for a man in his position is to give one year's notice of his intention to go on pre-retirement leave. If he had been so ill that he could no longer work, he would almost certainly have been given a period of sick leave and allowed to fade away quietly. Instead, within two hours of receiving Mr Leung's letter of resignation some time after 4pm on July 5, Secretary for the Civil Service Lam Woon-kwong wrote back approving the director of immigration's application to go on pre-retirement leave from the following morning. Mr Lam was later to claim he had not known about Mr Leung's intention to retire beforehand. Yet in his reply, the secretary not only formally waived the notice requirement, but also relieved the director of immigration of his powers and functions of office. Mr Lam may not have known in advance Mr Leung would resign, but the speed of the decision-making process suggests he was certainly prepared for it. The obvious question then is: did the director of immigration jump before he was pushed? There are good reasons to suspect he did. That very morning the two men had held what Mr Lam later admitted to the committee was a 'pre-arranged' meeting. Despite repeated questioning by the media, the Legislative Council and on at least one occasion the Executive Council, the secretary for the civil service has refused to reveal the smallest detail of what was said at the meeting or to say at whose request the meeting was arranged. But the letter fired off by Mr Leung that afternoon did not allude to the supposedly urgent personal reasons which both Mr Leung and the Government have since insisted were the grounds for accepting his immediate resignation. It was a bland submission of an application for retirement, 'pursuant to our discussion this morning', and a request to be allowed to go on immediate pre-retirement leave. Even more extraordinary, Mr Lam claims that no record was kept of the meeting and that this was not unusual, as if such discussions and decisions were routine. Yet the secretary himself has admitted that although some 30 senior officers had been granted a waiver of the full year's notice in the previous two years, not one was given leave to go with immediate effect. It obviously suits Mr Lam that no record should be available for the Select Committee to subpoena as evidence. But the claim that neither he, nor his deputy Sandra Lee Suk-yee (who also attended the meeting), took notes is surely no more unbelievable than the secretary for security's claim that he did not feel the need to talk to Mr Leung and was happy to be informed rather than consulted on the retirement. Nor is it more incredible than the claims by both Mr Leung's successor and his deputy and colleague for 31 years Christopher Lee Ka-keung that they did not ask the reason for his sudden retirement. Mrs Ip told the Select Committee that when she had been approached about taking over the post she was told he had retired for personal reasons and had not inquired further. 'I'm not that gossipy,' she explained. Mr Lee, meanwhile, said that while he had been surprised, he was used to taking orders without question after so many years in the disciplined services. The excuse for refusing to enlarge on what passed between himself and Mr Leung that morning, trotted out by Mr Lam and the very few other senior officials in the know, is that this was to protect Mr Leung's privacy, reassure other public servants that their personal discussions with the secretary of the civil service would remain confidential. The Government's constant refrain is that it is not in the public interest to disclose the contents of the discussion, or the reasons for the resignation, although many would argue that the seriousness of the suspicions surrounding the case would make it very much in the public interest to dispell them with a clear statement of the facts. The Government also claims that the departure did not damage the public interest. Legislators like to put the question in reverse. At last month's Select Committee hearing, Ronald Arculli asked Mr Tsang, who was acting chief secretary during much of the summer's controversy, to say if Mr Leung's retirement 'is in the public interest rather than has not damaged the public interest'. He did not get a straight answer. The chances are, they will not get a straighter answer this week out of Mr Leung when he finally appears before them. This will surprise no one. Legislator Philip Wong Yu-hong said the whole Select Committee had been a pointless exercise. He had been against its formation from the beginning, although he had joined it in the end, because he did not believe anyone would say anything. And everyone who had appeared before it so far had since proved his point. Ms Loh hoped Mr Leung would make at least some effort to clear his name. For the moment, the public will have to be satisfied that the legislature is at least prepared to keep the subject open and to keep worrying at this wound in the administration's side until something of real significance turns up.