IT HAS been a terrible fortnight for the Urban Council, with the inauguration of the new Hong Kong stadium going disastrously wrong and China pulling out of its film festival over the presence of two ''unofficial'' mainland films.
First, the controversial multi-million dollar opening ceremony was widely branded as a flop. Then, complaints from angry residents led to a noise abatement order being slapped on the stadium. The week ended with more bad news as it emerged that Beijing had withdrawn nine films from the council's Hong Kong International Film Festival in protest at plans to screen two films by independent mainland producers.
Urban Council chairman, Dr Ronald Leung Ding-bong, insists he should not be blamed for any of this. In defence of his council's decisions, he spoke to the Sunday Morning Post, claiming critics had been unfair.
''I am being forced to swallow a dead cat,'' Dr Leung said, quoting a popular Chinese phrase.
''Everyone is hiding under my skirt while I am forced to the front to be the scapegoat for the mistakes of others.'' Yet that has not stopped him from urgently acting to try to mitigate the damage, after visiting the stadium at So Kon Po and discovering residents' complaints about noise levels were justified. Stadium managers, Wembley International, hastily met last week with the Environmental Protection Department, which issued the noise abatement order, and agreed on the joint monitoring of future concerts. They hope to ensure the next such event, a concert by Canto-pop star Alan Tam Wing-lun on April 9, can go ahead.
Dr Leung said the next step would be to look at redesigning the stadium, possibly moving its stage, or even constructing an acoustic shell overhead, in an effort to contain the noise. But whether such ''corrective surgery'' will do much to mitigate the basic design flaw of building a noise-generating venue at a site virtually surrounded by mountains is open to doubt.
''The location is ideal for an atomic bomb,'' Dr Leung admitted. ''Everything is contained by the mountains. If you put anything in, it cannot escape but shoots up again. If you generate noise in a valley surrounded on three sides by high mountains then there's no way for that noise to escape.'' But he said the council had played no part in the design of the stadium, which was commissioned by the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club in consultation with the Government's Recreation and Culture Branch. According to Dr Leung, the council only learned fairlylate in the day - through press reports - that the Government wanted them to run it.
