Dear Subscribers,
The Last Ten Years – Reflections of Leadership
Tung Chee Hwa and Donald Tsang
How do Tung and Tsang compare? While they are very different personalities, there are similarities in their assumptions about politics and policy preferences.
Tung had problems in policy-making and implementation. Tsang knows how to manoeuvre the government machinery to implement decisions but his administration is weak in developing policies.
A key problem is legitimacy. They owed their rise to Beijing. Both adopted mainland political-speak, and relied on the united front machinery to get elected, as well as to get key policies through.
A: Cri de Coeur… less politics please
1. Good intentions: Tung wanted to be a political leader minus the politics. Best he didn’t have to justify decisions. Tung believed he was good at policy.
2. Politics as PR: Tsang believes he is good at policy and PR.
3. What a pain: Explaining decisions has been so fatiguing for Tung and Tsang because having often announced policies without an adequate understanding of the issues they don’t have good enough explanations.
B. Legitimacy … Beijing got them there
1. Unpopular – so what: In 1996, Beijing chose Tung to lead Hong Kong. In 2002, despite overwhelming unpopularity, Beijing endorsed Tung for a 2nd term and used its united front machinery to create a semblance of support.
2. Unexpected contest: With Tsang, the 2007 election was fascinating in that he had high public popularity but Beijing had to expend a lot of elbow grease to get the pro-business and leftist camps to give him their votes.
3. Interests above policy: No wonder Tsang said in his election platform he wanted officials to be “interest coordinators” more than “policy formulators”. To get the support of Election Committee members, sustain support in LegCo and to get important policies passed where Beijing has an interest in the result – i.e. constitutional development – he needs to coordinate various “interests” embedded in the political structure.
C. Concluding Observations … Tsang challenges.
1. Legitimacy and policy capacity deficits: Tsang’s Achilles’ heal is the lack of political legitimacy. He has to make up for it by doing the right things well. But he is hampered by a policy capacity deficiency, which makes it hard for him to identify what are the right things to do in the first place. The result is many government policies will be challenged by civil society. Ministers and officials will continue to feel they are under siege.
2. United front overdrive: With the imminent publication of the Green Paper on political reform and the consultation that will follow, the District Council election this year and the Legislative Council next year, we will also continue to see very active united front activities to help bolster government legitimacy. This will reinforce complaints about Beijing’s interference in local affairs.
3. Forget Tung not: Tsang should not forget how Tung fell from grace. He failed to adequately represent Hong Kong’s interest to Beijing. Hong Kong people felt their chief executive could not or would not stand with them. This proved fatal.
NB
(a) For more, see http://www.civic-exchange.org/publications/2007/FCC0620.pdf
(b) FOUR new Civic Exchange HKSAR 10th Anniversary Books, see http://www.civic-exchange.org
(c) A good website – Asia Sentinel – latest issue on Wu Bangguo’s comments, see http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php
CHRISTINE LOH
Civic Exchange – HK’s independent think tank
www.civic-exchange.org
To subscribe (free) or unsubscribe – email yyip@civic-exchange.org