The report on the review of public service broadcasting is a remarkable document and does great credit to the efficiency of Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's administration. In 1999, pressure was put on then chief executive Tung Chee-hwa to whip the unruly RTHK into line. His famous response was 'Do it slowly.' Mr Tung took years, and still failed to do it. It seems Mr Tsang will get the job done in a matter of months.
The timing of the report's publication - just days after the chief executive election - is significant. It was obviously delayed to avoid any controversy that might have had an impact on Mr Tsang's election campaign.
The committee's recommendation that an independent public broadcaster be established by statute is in itself unexceptional. The shock to many was the categorical rejection that RTHK could be transformed into the recommended independent public broadcaster.
The report cleverly cited dissatisfaction with RTHK's current, precarious status: its vulnerability to government pressure and increasing need to compromise in order to survive. This, it said, would prevent RTHK from exercising editorial independence as a public broadcaster accountable to the public and free from political interference.
But this is most unconvincing. It also shows that the report's true purpose is to reduce RTHK to a government mouthpiece, severely reduced in size and stripped of all the credibility and influence it has built up in the Hong Kong community over its 79-year history. The report is justifiably seen to be the instrument of RTHK's demise.
It is also remarkable in the scope and concrete details of its recommendations, and the swiftness with which the whole job is to be done.
