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28.
Although attention tends to focus on the
Legislative and Executive Councils, there is a need too
for local leadership elsewhere.
29. Within the civil service we have for some years
followed a policy of giving properly qualified local
applicants priority for appointment. As a result, many
hundreds of talented local people have been recruited and advanced through the system. Half of our policy
Secretaries are local officers. So are most of the heads
of our government departments.
30. The Provisions of the Joint Declaration and Basic
Law are quite clear. In 1997 the Chief Executive and
his principal officials must be Hong Kong Chinese. We
are already well on the way to achieving that position.
We may lose some local officers either to the private
sector or to emigration. But I do not see real
difficulty in meeting the requirements of 1997. The
public service has both the depth and the strength of potential leadership that it needs. This is vitally
important. The civil service has a dual role to play,
not only as an effective and efficient provider of
services to the community, but also as a source of
stability within the community. People have a right to expect the civil service to continue to perform both
roles in the years ahead.
31.
In the Judiciary too we must encourage more local
talent. Here, as in the civil service, expatriates have
their role to play. I hope there will for many years be
those who are prepared to play it: they have served Hong
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