Politics and law make strange bedfellows - as well as bedroom decorations. Perhaps in a bid to lighten up the image of Secretary for Justice Elsie Leung Oi-sie as a fire-spitting defender of the (mainland) faith, her publicists invited a number of journalists to her Peak residence last weekend. Miss Leung showed the press her photo albums, dating from when she attended the elite high school, Sacred Heart Canossian College.
In spite of her conventional taste in clothes, Miss Leung said, as a young woman she ardently followed the latest trends. She once modelled her hair-do on the movie stars of the 1940s Hollywood hit The Bathing Beauty.
But the climax of the PR trip was a tour of her bedroom. Above the bed was a scroll of calligraphy of the words zhengqi or 'righteousness'.
It's said the unconscious mind works most efficiently when one is asleep. Certainly, in both waking or somnolent hours, the Government view is that Miss Leung can do no wrong - and make no misjudgments.
A blistering attack on the Department of Justice by legal expert Professor Yash Ghai, during a speech at the Foreign Correspondents Club yesterday, made it clear that he, however, is not of this view.
Legal errors made by the department were too lengthy to recite, he said, but one crucial point in the Court of Final Appeal row was the way Miss Leung cited mainland civil law as the justification for the reinterpretation move. In fact, mainland law was not civil, but Marxist/Leninist law.
But it was the change introduced to the Hong Kong system which sparked his greatest ire.
