OUTGOING Information Co-ordinator Mike Hanson professes surprise at the row over his posting to head a review of civil service training programmes. Angry legislators intend to raise the issue at a Legislative Council panel meeting next week, alleging the job has been 'tailor-made' for the Government House press spokesman. But Mr Hanson, who starts his new post on Tuesday, denied this.
'I haven't gone out of my way to do a job in training or anywhere else,' he said. 'It's just that I've been in this job [press spokesman] for three years and am due for a move.' Yet perhaps the latest ruckus should not come as a surprise to Mr Hanson. In two years of spearheading the campaign in support of Governor Chris Patten's political reforms he has made many enemies in and out of the civil service. 'Of course I've had to tread on a lot of toes,' he conceded, noting the previous information co-ordinator, Tony Miller, now Director-General of Trade, also encountered such hostility.
'That's why you can't do this job for too long: it wears you out and ruins your social life. You have to move on and do other things,' he said.
The bad feeling towards Mr Hanson appears to have been aggravated by his status as a British civil servant on secondment to the Hong Kong Government since 1985, and his close identification with Mr Patten.
Despite coming from the working-class background of a northern English coal-mining family, and having previously been a member of the opposition Labour Party, Mr Hanson has become a close friend of the former chairman of the Conservative Party who is now Governor of Hong Kong, and an ardent supporter of his moves to build democracy.
Certainly Mr Hanson finds it difficult to disguise his disdain for the Foreign Office Sinologists who advocate a different approach.