The Government's attitude towards the choice of a Commissioner for Tourism has been a sorry saga from the start.
Officials never wanted to give the post to an outsider. Instead, Secretary for Economic Services Stephen Ip Shu-kwan initially outlined a series of criteria, such as expertise in liaising between government departments - tailor-made for appointing a bureaucrat.
When an outcry from legislators forced the administration reluctantly to conduct an open recruitment exercise, it still managed to hamstring the process by inserting a mandatory Chinese-language requirement.
That is not to decry the importance of appointing bilingual candidates where possible.
But even the Government has now tacitly conceded its inflexible insistence on this point was a mistake, by announcing it will drop the requirement when the recruitment exercise is rerun next year.
Until then, the administration has reverted to what was always its preferred option - appointing a civil servant.
