Warning signs are raised when the government's most significant achievement of the year is to have bamboozled legislators into voting funds for the erection of a lavish new headquarters for its staff. When, furthermore, the government claims that this new palace for the bureaucracy is in fact a 'people's project', the warning signals start to flash with greater urgency. But this is precisely the claim made by Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, who has spent most of the past 12 months oscillating between denial and hubris. Yet Mr Tsang has, some may say remarkably, managed to restore credibility to government by placing a firm hand on the tiller that steers the bureaucracy. And he has benefited simply by not being his predecessor, Tung Chee-hwa, whose period in office now seems like a bad dream. A firm hand on the tiller may mean that the paper clips are properly sorted, but it does not translate into significant policy achievements. On the contrary, 2006 will enter the annals of history as the year when big things were not done. Tax reform, which was said to be a cornerstone of government fiscal policy, was effectively put on hold as the government backed down on proposals to introduce a goods and services tax. Then there was the scrapping of the ill-conceived West Kowloon cultural hub project which, it had been claimed, would really put Hong Kong on the map as a 'world city'. And after the Legislative Council defeated the administration's constitutional reform proposals in December last year, the government simply froze all initiatives to move towards achieving representative government. Instead, it claimed it was engaged in a consultation process. It is this rather worrying insistence on relegating everything that is awkward into the vortex of consultation processes that makes the government a laughing stock. When official vandals tore down the Star Ferry clock tower in Central, the government insisted that the action had been taken only after full public consultation. It was this, almost as much as the vandalism itself, that provoked real anger. Few people even knew that a so-called consultation exercise had been held. When they discovered that it had largely been confined to the weary old crew of yes-men who populate the government's advisory bodies, they got even angrier. While the government claims to be consulting the people on all manner of issues, it demonstrates that listening and hearing are two very different things. This is why one of the biggest issues of the year has crept up on officials, who have developed an unusual ability to hear the public talking while not paying the slightest bit of attention to what is actually being said. Practically everyone has been talking about the deterioration of air quality, and the government has pretended to listen. It even printed up some posters depicting blue skies to show what they looked like, but when it came to action there was nothing to be seen. On the contrary, Mr Tsang used the occasion of an environmental conference to declare the problem to be largely illusory - in effect, telling the public that what they could see was not reality. This speech was the chief executive's biggest disaster of the year. That's not just because it suggested that government inaction was set to continue, but because it went a long way to diminish the trust people must have in their government if it is to retain credibility. Mr Tsang could have limited the damage if his aggressively ill-conceived remarks had been counterbalanced by something resembling a plan for remedial action. But all the public was offered was - yes, you guessed right - further consultation. Things have reached a stage where even when the government does something right or shows initiative, its actions are treated with scepticism. This is why, for example, the new race discrimination bill has been greeted with such opposition by the very people pressing for such a measure. This is truly a pioneering piece of legislation that will make Hong Kong one of the few places in Asia with a law of this kind. Yet the bill's opponents point to its copious loopholes and - here's the crunch - they fear that the government is not really committed to the legislation's stated objectives. The introduction of the education voucher scheme for kindergartens produced the same effect, in another way. Many of those who have long advocated such a scheme - which is designed to produce greater parental choice - were alarmed by the selective way it was to be implemented. Instead of listening to what objectors had to say, the administration simply threatened to withdraw the scheme altogether. This is a strange way of facilitating dialogue. While the government moves further away from the people, there have been a number of developments beyond the control of the administration that give rise to hope for the future. The Hong Kong judiciary yet again demonstrated its independence from the government and commitment to maintaining the rule of law. This was magnificently demonstrated by the way the courts dealt with the many people arrested during the World Trade Organisation protests one year ago. While insisting on the need to maintain public order, they were equally adamant that this would not be achieved by arbitrary arrests and the conviction of suspects on inadequate evidence. The judiciary showed the world that a person protesting against the state in Hong Kong has the full protection of the law. It was a message far more powerful than anything coming out of Lower Albert Road. And while the government dithered and retreated, many ordinary citizens took matters into their own hands: by going out on the streets to protect their heritage; turning off their lights to show concern for the environment; and even taking part in rigged elections on the grounds that the only way to change the process was to fight it at all levels. It seems as though the people do not have the government they deserve. Stephen Vines is a Hong Kong-based journalist and entrepreneur
