IT WAS REPORTEDLY at an internal policy-review meeting chaired by Secretary for Transport Nicholas Ng Wing-fui that the Government took the decision to turn its back on the groundswell of opinion which had been building in favour of laws against racial discrimination in recent months.
While Tung Chee-hwa recently justified this on the basis that legislation is not the best way to tackle the problem, arguing that race discrimination is a far bigger problem in some countries which do have such laws, such as the United States and Britain, it was a very different consideration that was apparently the crucial factor behind the policy-review body's decision.
Namely fear of opening the floodgates to a host of other anti-discrimination laws. For if the Government had agreed to enact laws on race it would have, in effect, conceded that its critics were right in arguing it was legally obliged to do so under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which applies to Hong Kong under the Basic Law.
And that would make it also obliged to enact laws to outlaw the numerous other types of discrimination covered by the Covenant, including unfair treatment of homosexuals. And, more seriously, discrimination on the grounds of age, something the Government has always strenuously opposed taking action against, for fear this would interfere with the free-market economy that is seen as the cornerstone of Hong Kong's past economic success.
Instead it has now become clear that Mr Tung and his team have decided to take the hardline approach of flatly denying Hong Kong is under any obligation to legislate in relation to the Covenant.
In a speech last Thursday, Secretary for Justice Elsie Leung Oi-sie cited a recent right-of-abode court ruling against a mainland mother to buttress her argument that the contents of the Covenant are not binding, but rather merely 'promotional and aspirational'. And that they need not be implemented through legislation, but can instead be encouraged by more ineffective means such as 'economic, social and educational measures'.