Miffed, but with a stiff upper lip

IT is always an amusing sight to hear bureaucrats defending a decision they clearly dislike. And Secretary for Security Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee's half-hearted defence of last week's decision not to charge 16 students and other protesters arrested for allegedly breaching the Public Order Ordinance during a right-of-abode protest in June certainly fell into this category.

'The decision was made independently by the Secretary for Justice [Elsie Leung Oi-sie],' she insisted. 'There does not exist a question of whether individual officials are happy or disappointed about it.'

It was the most unconvincing statement by a senior civil servant since Chief Secretary for Administration Anson Chan Fang On-sang's assertion that she was perfectly happy to be ticked off by Vice-Premier Qian Qichen during her recent visit to Beijing for not lending enough support to Tung Chee-hwa.

After all, Mrs Ip had already come very close to publicly calling for the protesters to be charged when she was quoted saying that it would be good to see the controversial ordinance tested in the courts. Nor did she make any secret of her feelings when she compared those who dared to disagree with her with the pig Napoleon in George Orwell's famous novel Animal Farm.

Fortunately the hardline security chief does not decide who should be prosecuted in Hong Kong. Nor do the police, who were even more vocal in their criticism of the decision not to press charges, with officers' associations warning it would undermine force morale.

Such anger is not unusual among investigating agencies when they discover that a case they have so painstakingly constructed will never be brought to court. The Independent Commission Against Corruption was similarly outraged when Miss Leung decided not to prosecute newspaper tycoon Sally Aw Sian in 1998 following a fraud probe at the now defunct Hong Kong Standard.

But while that decision was certainly suspect, the importance of having a prosecuting authority that makes decisions independently of those who carry out the arrests was clearly shown by last week's events.