It is not unusual for executives to take long-serving or highly regarded staff with them when they move to a new employer. Anyone settling into a big job feels more confident if they start out backed by colleagues on whose capabilities they have learned to rely.
If, as proposed, Financial Secretary-designate Antony Leung Kam-chung brings his private secretary and press secretary when he takes over in May, he will be following the practice of former Governor Chris Patten, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa and Secretary for Justice Elsie Leung Oi-sie. Political reforms anticipated by the Government mean that in future, many senior posts will go to people from the top echelons of commerce and industry. Once a suitable variation of a ministerial system is agreed upon, that will be the trend, and the SAR will benefit from a wider pool of talent.
Legislators have indicated that they appreciate Mr Leung's need to bring his personal staff, but noted a need to introduce rules to govern their appointment. They are right. Aides to senior officials handle highly sensitive and confidential matters. If greater numbers of new staff are to be brought in from outside, a mechanism should be set up to ensure transparency is maintained. Employees privy to confidential material should undergo vetting checks to ensure that there is no conflict of interests, and that they are people of integrity.
However, introducing a vetting mechanism will be the easy part. A more difficult undertaking is to ensure the personal aides of outside appointees work smoothly with career civil servants. That would require tact from all involved. The discord between Mr Tung's personal team and incumbent staff in his early days is an open secret. It led to some contentious issues being badly mishandled, and helped to get Mr Tung off to a poor start from which - in many people's eyes - he has never fully recovered. However, that office is a special case. The personal staff of policy secretaries will have less power or influence than Mr Tung's hand-picked team. Hopefully, the disastrous consequences of his special aide Andrew Lo Cheung-on's chat with the vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong in the Robert Chung Ting-yiu opinion poll saga will not be repeated.
