Just Saying | Warning: Hong Kong risks return to bad old days of corruption if ICAC’s wounds are allowed to fester
Yonden Lhatoo is deeply troubled by the managerial drama and politicisation of the city’s celebrated anti-corruption agency

It wasn’t so long ago that corruption was a way of life in Hong Kong.
In the bad old days of the 1960s and early 1970s, ambulance crews extorted “tea money” from hapless citizens to take sick or injured people to hospital, as did nursing staff for a glass of water or a bedpan for a patient.
If your home caught fire, you had to pay firefighters to turn up in the first place and then grease their palms again to turn off the water after they were done.
The police force was so corrupt that it ran protection rackets like a crime syndicate, and a visit to your local police station could be likened to a dentist’s appointment in a den of dacoits.
Everything changed when the Independent Commission Against Corruption was formed in 1974 with a sweeping mandate to clean up the public sector. It ended up transforming Hong Kong into one of the cleanest cities in the world.