From an anthropological point of view, the government reaction to the Wang Fuk fire inquiry report makes interesting reading. Four arms of the government were criticised in the report. Also after a major catastrophe one might question the future of the Chief Executive.
However only one policy secretary, the now former Secretary for Housing Winnie Ho, has actually resigned. Pressed about the reasons for his own survival, the Secretary for Security, Chris Tang, said that the Chief Secretary had made a “political decision”. In other words, Ms Ho did not jump. She was pushed. Other candidates for early retirement were not pushed.
To understand the underlying mechanism at work here we can turn to Simpson’s very readable book “Cannibalism and the Common Law”. This is mostly about a tragic incident in 1884, which led to the landmark case R v. Dudley and Stephens.
The two defendants were among the four-man crew – three adults and a cabin boy – of the yacht Mignonette, which sank abruptly in the South Atlantic while being sailed to Australia. In the rush to abandon their swiftly sinking ship the crew took to a small boat, but had little food and no water.
After a 19-day ordeal the three adults took a vote on whether to kill and eat the cabin boy. The two defendants had voted in favour and did the deed the following day. The other sailor had voted against, but partook of the resulting food supply. He later appeared as the main prosecution witness. The ensuing legal proceedings were complex but are generally held to have established that necessity is not a legal defence to a charge of murder.
The point which concerns us here is that this was, in at least one respect, a typical case. Simpson surveys the extensive literature on nautical cannibalism and finds that it was more or less expected that sailors would in extremis, sacrifice one of their number to provide food for the rest. In the days of wooden ships, which even if heavily damaged did not sink, and had no way of calling for help, long waits for rescue were commonplace.
In theory the selection of the member of the crew to be consumed was always supposed to be random, decided by elaborate rituals involving short straws, dice or tossed coins. In practice, though, the role of food item was usually bestowed on an outsider: the only foreign member of the crew, a non-seaman (but not the cook, obviously) or the cabin boy. The cabin boy was a surprisingly popular choice, possibly on the basis that lamb was more digestible than mutton, as it were.
We can now see that Ms Ho’s qualifications for the political sacrificial altar were not that she was any more culpable or responsible than the other possible candidates, but that she was not one of the boys.
Ms Ho did not achieve her high rank in the government through diligent service to the DAB, the FTU or the People’s Party. Before becoming a policy secretary she was not a political figure, she was the Director of Architectural Services, diverted to housing chief because, presumably, the People’s Politicos did not include anyone who could plausibly be given the role.
At the same time, though a former civil servant, Ms Ho was an architect with no role in the law and order industry. Her efforts in the housing field might have improved her standing with the public, but in this as in other matters there is a suspicion that, as Mr Tang put it “What matters is that the chief executive, as the head of the government, has made an order, which we must follow.”
But Ms Ho might have survived not being in the political mainstream, not being in the law and order field and not having made a huge splash as a policy secretary. She has the additional disadvantage of not being a man. In the absence of a convenient cabin boy…
