tim's experiment

On a street level, Hong Kong has to be one of the most corruption free countries in the world. No doubt there are funny things still going on in nooks and corners (anyone for the restaurant business?) but on the whole we have seen the back of the sort of graft where an official charges you an unofficial fee for doing what he is paid to do anyway.

This is a credit to the efforts of many individuals who, most of them unsung and some of them at considerable cost, were prepared to fight this good fight. We seem, however, to have drifted into a situation where junior civil servants are expected to be sea green and incorruptible, while their most senior leaders enjoy the subtler forms of corruption restrained only by shame and the rather remote possibility of embarrassment.

What went through the minds, one wonders, of senior civil servants who were apparently expected to do their best to arrange an audience with the Pope for Donald Tsang? This could not possibly be considered part of the duties of anyone concerned. Even if we concede some diplomatic heft to the Vatican, foreign affairs are expressly reserved to the central government of China. Of course Mr Tsang wished to meet the Pope, as many Catholics do. The idea that it was a function of the Hong Kong Government to arrange this for him was just as dishonest as stealing the paperclips and potentially a lot more expensive. I accept that the Italian gentleman who was acting as an intermediary in the matter was told that the rule of law could not be bent for his benefit. But what if he had asked for some more modest and doable quid pro quo?

Then we come to the distressing spectacle presented by the former head of the ICAC. Watching this sorry individual wriggling in Legco was nauseating. Have Administrative Officers totally absolved themselves from the rule that if you are the Captain you are responsible for the ship? I am not actually worried about the ICAC. The Commission is full of people who  take a firm line on matters of accountability and propriety. One of them was bound to blow the whistle sooner or later. What bothers me is what happens in Departments and Bureaus where the atmosphere is less puritanical. I fear the head of the ICAC was just exercising what he perceived to be the rights of department heads and such like senior people everywhere. Let there be mao tai, he said, and there was mao tai. The books can always be cooked afterwards.

The worrying thing about all this is not just the government money wasted (though that may be considerable) but what it says about our leaders’ relations with rich people they may encounter. The receipt of favours sooner or later leads to the delivery of reciprocal favours. It also leads to scepticism about official decisions generally. The recent decision about a boutique hotel on the Peak, for example, was greeted with shrugs. Nobody believes the official explanation. Of the unofficial explanation – people expect no better.

One also has to wonder how long junior government employees can be expected to behave themselves if they routinely see their seniors pigging it on perks. Not for ever, I fancy.