Inside Track
PERHAPS IT IS just coincidence that the Government has written the rules for next year's Chief Executive contest in a way that greatly increases the chances of Tung Chee-hwa being re-elected unopposed.
The administration denies that its bill setting out rules for the 2002 election, tabled in the Legislative Council last week, has been tailor-made for Mr Tung.
But if it is a coincidence, then it is certainly a fortuitous one - and not just for Mr Tung, but for the whole Government. For, after making it so much more difficult for anyone to stand against him, the civil service may now be able to avoid the difficult question of how to preserve its supposed neutrality if a serving Chief Executive faces a contested election for the post.
This is a problem which is far less likely to arise as a result of the bill's controversial provision that all candidates must be nominated by 100 members of the 800-strong Election Committee - whose names, and hence opposition to Mr Tung serving a second term, will then be made public.
The Government denies this publicity is designed to deter electors from nominating anyone to stand against Mr Tung. And it is true the names of nominees are not normally kept secret in Legco and other elections - although the administration, citing the importance of the Chief Executive contest, plans to give them greater publicity than is the case in such polls.
But the end result is obvious. It will be almost impossible to find 100 members of the predominantly Beijing-friendly committee prepared publicly to put their names to any rival contender, especially after Beijing has made clear its support for Mr Tung serving a second term.
That is probably just as well, as far as most senior civil servants are concerned. Officials have repeatedly proved reluctant to face up to the implications of a contested election. After all, they are, in theory, apolitical. And experience the world over has shown it is a basic rule in almost all countries with a politically neutral bureaucracy that civil servants must not do anything to favour a candidate when the post of their boss is up for election. In Britain, for instance, much of the prime minister's staff stop work during an election campaign. Applied to Hong Kong, that would mean Mr Tung's civil service spin-doctor, Information Co-ordinator Stephen Lam Sui-lung, would be gagged if a rival candidate to his boss emerged. Policy secretaries could not even appear in public with Mr Tung.
That is a recipe for chaos in a small society such as the SAR. But when senior officials are quizzed about this, it becomes clear it is not something they have really considered. 'Better write a column about it,' joked one. 'Then we might start thinking about it.'
They may not have to do so for many more years, since the election bill makes it unlikely Mr Tung's 2002 candidature will be opposed. And by the time the issue arises again, during the 2007 and 2012 contests, the civil service is likely to have lost any pretensions to neutrality.
Mr Tung's announcement in last October's Policy Address of an accountability system for senior officials is merely the first step in the inevitable trend towards a more political civil service - a system where, as in the United States, top officials lose their job whenever a new Chief Executive assumes power.
This system also leaves them free to campaign for an incumbent to be re-elected, which may be preferable to the present situation of having to pretend to be neutral, and rely on supposedly fortuitous coincidences to avoid the headache of how to behave if Mr Tung faces a challenger.
Danny Gittings is the Post's Editorial Pages Editor
