Who's watching the government appointees of Hong Kong's quasi-public bodies?
Philip Yeung says these council chairmen should be assessed on performance to prevent abuse
There is a joke going around local university campuses. A mainland academic asked his Hong Kong counterpart: " Why do you have a council chairman when you already have a president?" The local wag replied: "Our council chairman is like your party secretary." The mainland visitor nodded knowingly.
True or false, this outsized role of the chairman of the university, or indeed of any quasi-public organisation, such as the Airport Authority or the stock exchange, has rarely, if ever, come under the spotlight.
Recently, a member of the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications posed this question to the head of a local tertiary institution: "The chairman oversees the president. But who oversees the chairman ?" The simple answer is "nobody". The chairman, surrounded by his own hand-picked council members, is king. Therein lurks the danger.
Immune to scrutiny, the chairman is free to define his own role. How he behaves depends largely on his temperament and ego. Appointed by the chief executive for a three-year term and serving at his pleasure, he is usually reappointed to a second term, if he doesn't ruffle any political feathers.
But six years is a long time in the life of any institution that is a work in progress.
Chief executives like to tap the big three professions - law, accounting and medicine - for candidates. Most appointees behave with decorum towards the president. But beware the chairman with a big ego and time to kill - a superannuated professional who sees the institution as his lengthened shadow.