Until Hong Kong gets to choose its chief executive, a consensus is a distant dream

I remember the early hours of November 1, 1999, when we reached a final agreement with the Walt Disney Company after nine months of gruelling negotiations. There had been no public consultation on whether Hong Kong should have such a theme park before the deal was done, nor was there an open competitive tender. What would have been the point?

Disney at the time operated nine of the world’s top 10 theme parks and we in the Hong Kong administration wanted one for ourselves. We trusted the common sense of the local community, in particular our legislators, to respond appropriately if we were able to strike a deal. To seek approval, we went to the Legislative Council seven times within that November. Eventually, the project was approved with only three dissenting votes, we signed the final contract in December and Hong Kong got its Disneyland more than a decade before Shanghai got theirs.

Legco ready to give Disneyland expansion plans the thumbs up

One thing we can be sure of amid the present Palace Museum saga, it would not be possible to sign such a deal now, or get approval for one after the event. Indeed, any sensible organisation would hesitate to engage the Hong Kong government on anything substantial, given our present political climate.

The atmosphere started to change in the early part of this century. In December 2000, we went to the Legco Finance Committee to seek approval for a government contribution towards the cost of a new exhibition centre next to the airport.

No deal had been done and we were proposing to engage in a full-scale global competitive tender exercise to select the private sector partner. The project brief had been subject to extensive consultation with Legco members and all relevant parties, and amended to meet public comments. Yet those who had promised in private their full support proceeded to challenge the project in the actual meeting, so as to score some political points.

In the event, the money was approved 12 months later. We cut the overall project delay to only four months by going ahead in the meantime with some parts that did not require funding approval. The final contracts were signed amid the severe acute respiratory syndrome crisis in 2003, and the AsiaWorld Expo opened ahead of schedule in 2005.

After that it was all downhill. An urgent need to expand Hong Kong Disneyland a few years after opening was delayed by a mixture of political timidity and the knowledge that any proposal from the administration would be opposed whatever the merits.