IT CERTAINLY didn't take long for new Chief Secretary for Administration Donald Tsang Yam-kuen to try and prove he is his own man.
Barely two months in the post and he has already managed to distance himself from his boss over the Hong Kong issue that is being most closely watched overseas at present - namely, what will happen to local followers of Falun Gong.
However hard the Government tries to pretend otherwise, it is difficult to disguise the difference in tone, if not substance, between Mr Tsang's indication last Thursday that he did not consider the group an 'evil cult' and Tung Chee-hwa's unequivocal use of that term under questioning from legislators a week earlier.
Speaking to the Foreign Correspondents Club, Mr Tsang even hinted Mr Tung's earlier remarks might just be his boss's own view rather than the official stance of the whole government. But a government spokesman later denied this, insisting Mr Tsang had never specifically described the earlier remarks as Mr Tung's personal view.
Mr Tsang came into office dogged by charges that he was a 'yes man' not prepared to stand up to his boss in the same way as his predecessor, Anson Chan Fang On-sang, but his Falun Gong remarks have certainly put him back on the side of the angels. Their delivery in English to an audience of foreign correspondents seemed almost calculated to bolster the international image he cares so much about.
But it would be wrong to see last Thursday's remarks as the birth of a new 'conscience of Hong Kong', as his predecessor was sometimes called, prepared to speak up in defence of the SAR's autonomy as often as Mrs Chan did regardless of how much conflict it caused with Mr Tung.
This is an exceptional issue, as it touches on Mr Tsang's Catholic beliefs, with his church having its own definition of evil cults, which certainly does not include the Falun Gong. Coming so soon after he took up the post, it also provided a good chance to dispel any danger of a yes-man image.