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SCMP Reporter

I refer to the article headlined, 'Tien's conservative course' (South China Morning Post, December 10).

 The SAR needs a chief executive who possesses the fundamental values of a statesman.

 He does not need to be good in business, but he must have vision, leadership qualities and a good sense of our cultural values.

 He must have commonsense and be able to delegate power to elites.

 James Tien says that only business elites should run Hong Kong, but this is an oversimplification.

 A businessman who is good at creating wealth in shipping, textiles, the hotel industry, etc, would not necessarily be a good chief executive.

 A look at our present Chief Executive, Tung Chee-hwa proves my point.

 Hong Kong and the rest of the world, have changed dramatically in the last 20 years.

 A group of elites, which are partly political and partly business-oriented, operate under Mr Tung's leadership.

 But they are trying to apply ideas acquired in the 1970s and 1980s to deal with today's increasingly complex macro economic and political issues.

 Mr Tien is right to say the electoral system is to blame. But this has nothing to do with direct elections.

 It is due, as any ordinary SAR citizens well know, to the hangover effect of the colonial education system and colonial political institutions.

 I am sure no one would deny that we must have as many elites as possible to help with the changes that Hong Kong needs. We have to change our education system, and we need to change our political and administrative institutions.

 We must have a new strategic relationship with our motherland.

 But, above all, we have to work towards building a more mature political institutional framework to ensure that if the elected 'elite' is doing a bad job, a self-correcting mechanism is in place.

 MATTHEW AU, London, UK 



Tung's elites out of touch