No deals for Queen of Mean
We've just about had it with Hong Kong's very own Queen of Mean. For goodness sake, Clara Chong Ming-wah, just hand over the money. You were on a multimillion-dollar annual pay and perks package for years when you were the executive director of the Tourism Board. You can afford to return a measly HK$140,000 in health insurance money that an inquiry ruled you never should have received. That money belongs to the taxpayer, not you.
But no, the Queen of Mean says she'll only return the money on her terms. Tourism Board chairman James Tien Pei-chun won't say what these conditions are. But here's the thing, Mr Tien: the public has a right to know. We don't want any backroom deals. We're guessing Ms Chong will only hand over the money on condition the police end their investigation into the case. No deal, lady. Did you hear that, Mr Tien? Make her return the money with no strings attached, or else sue her to get it back. A court tussle may not be a bad thing. More dirt will come out on how the Tourism Board squandered public money. Don't you just love dirt?
We're not letting the chief off the hook
Yeah, yeah, we know we said we would give Donald Tsang Yam-kuen a break for throwing bags of public money at his political appointees. But we never said we would let him off the hook. And we're not going to. Do you know why? It's because he went and said something stupid last week. He used the words 'minimum' and 'pay' in close proximity. But he wasn't talking about helping out our working poor with a minimum-wage law, which Hong Kong's unscrupulous bosses have long opposed. He was talking about what a terrible idea it would be to pay his political appointees the bare minimum from the salary range that the Legislative Council has approved. This was his exact quote: 'During the recruitment process, we did not set our requirements to the minimum.'
We'll translate that for you. Even before he had found his political appointees, he had already decided to pay them far more than the bottom range of the salary scale approved by Legco. Now, that's what we call generosity. Why pay the minimum when you don't have to? That reasoning works for Hong Kong's bosses too, with the help of the government. Why pay the minimum to our working poor when you can pay below minimum and get away with it? No, we're not going to let Mr Tsang off the hook. We're not going to give him slack. We're going to reel him in.