Advertisement
Advertisement
Akers-Jones declined to say if he would support Leung for a second-term bid. Photo: David Wong

Hong Kong leader CY Leung 'doesn't have the art of making people love him', says former chief secretary David Akers-Jones

David Akers-Jones, a backer in 2012, says Leung may be more familiar with Hong Kong's problems than rivals

Former chief secretary David Akers-Jones has called on Leung Chun-ying, whom he supported in the 2012 election for chief executive, to do better in the next two years – even as he lamented Leung’s inability to make people “love him”.

While Akers-Jones declined to say if he would support Leung for a second-term bid, he did say that among known potential candidates, the incumbent was “the only one familiar with the problems” facing Hong Kong.

Asked if Leung had done a good job so far, Akers-Jones told the Post: “I think he’s a rather reticent personality, and he doesn’t have the art of making or causing people to love him.” 

He suggested former colonial governors and chief executives, such as Tung Chee-hwa and Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, had enjoyed high popularity at times.

“If you look at people we have known, CH Tung, David Wilson … Look at the queue when Edward Youde died, and yet he’s a very strict man, but they loved him… But CY, I have said it for you,” he said.

When asked whom he would support if Leung, former financial chief Antony Leung Kamchung and New People’s Party chairwoman Regina Ip Lau Sukyee became candidates for the top job, Akers-Jones said Leung knew the problems best, but he added: “All three can do better.”

Akers-Jones spent three decades in the colonial government. Photo: David Wong
On the city’s current problems, Akers-Jones said a lack of institutional memory had weakened the government’s ability to tackle controversies.

The 88-year-old said: “[It is important] to have people in the administration who remember how decisions were taken … and our ministers are unfortunately not equipped with that memory, that senior civil servants were equipped with.”

Citing current infrastructure projects such as the high-speed rail link to Guangzhou and a HK$140 billion third runway at Hong Kong International Airport, Akers-Jones highlighted how the colonial government had also faced huge challenges when building the airport in the 1990s.

“A memory of how things happened when we built [the airport, and] how were those huge decisions taken [would be] a great assistance to the government,” Akers-Jones said. The lack of memory, he said, was why the likes of James Blake, former chief executive of the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation, had to step in and help with the rail link.

In July, lawmaker Michael Tien Puk-sun said the HK$85.3 billion costs could have gone higher if Blake had not persuaded contractors to drop prices.

Akers-Jones suggested that transport secretary professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, development minister Paul Chan Mopo and education minister Eddie Ng Hak-kim should have more discussions with senior civil servants, to make the most of their knowledge about policies and past decisions.

“[The ministers] need to recognise that they have a problem, and in explaining why things go wrong, they will become much more plausible,” he urged.

Chan and Ng were both appointed in 2012, and were regarded by political scientists as the city’s most unpopular ministers.

Akers-Jones spent three decades in the colonial government.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Reticent CY Leung can’t make people love him: Akers-Jones
Post