Hong Kong's judicial system: the last defender of the people
Where can Hong Kong people look for accountability of the government, its ministers and bureaucrats? Clearly, they cannot look to Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa to make ministers accountable to principles, rather than to his own whims and preferences. The scandal surrounding Financial Secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung and the purchase of his new Lexus, and episodes such as the hounding of academic Robert Chung Ting-yiu by another of Mr Tung's personal appointees, demonstrate that.
Constitutionally, Mr Tung is accountable to the central government and the National People's Congress, not Hong Kong people. Central government officials are unlikely to abandon their man. Loss of face is more important than the quality of leadership in Hong Kong.
What, then, of Legco. It showed last week that the people cannot look to it to hold Mr Tung accountable. That is hardly surprising, given the narrow interest groups - often with their eyes on contracts and other state favours here or on the mainland - which have the balance of power in the unrepresentative chamber. But all is not lost. Hong Kong's judicial system is one of the few institutions which has gained in public esteem. For all its flaws - costs and archaic procedures among them - it has enhanced its reputation since the handover.
Elsewhere, judicial activism can run to ridiculous extremes - but in Hong Kong, where other restraints on bureaucratic and corporate power are so weak, its potential is clear and needs to be developed by public action.
One of the more encouraging signs was a Court of Final Appeal judgment last year rejecting the appeal of a senior government official convicted of the common law offence of misconduct in public office. The official had failed to disclose his interests when steering some contracts to a company - controlled by a close relative - which was not properly qualified for the work. The common law offence is very broad, but the court accepted that the offence 'is necessarily cast in general terms because it is designed to cover many forms of misconduct on the part of public officers'. It was not necessary to prove the officer personally benefited from his misconduct, only that the misconduct was wilful and serious.
This judgment was important and sweeping. Hopefully, the law will be applied again by the government against its erring officers. Failing that, cases should be brought by the public.
The ruling should also have made Mr Tung sit up. Did he disclose the large interest of the Li Ka-shing family-owned companies in his own family's shipping company prior to the Pacific Century Group being awarded the Cyberport contract on favourable terms without going through any of the normal tendering procedures? Was this not partial behaviour and damaging to the public interest?