TNAG-1357-FCO40-1798-Constitutional-development-in-Hong-Kong-1985 — Page 144

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Public Accountability

This means finding out where the real power to govern Hong Kong lies, and devising means to ensure that those who exercise that power are held publicly accountable for what they do. That power does not lie with the Legislative Council it never has done and it never will.

The general belief that it does is not discouraged by civil servants becuase it helps to boost the ego of Umelco members whilst at the same time concealing from the public the fact that civil servants hold a virtual monopoly of all executive power.

It is unfortunate that Hong Kong politicans are so much slower in the uptake than Peking officials. If they were smarter they would not be wasting their time fretting over the absence of direct elections but would be pondering the significance of the sentence in Annex I of the Joint Declaration "Principal officials (equivalent to Secretaries) shall be nominated by the chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and appointed by the Central People's Government".

Principal Officials

Because the key to achieving truly representative government in Hong Kong, in accordance with the declared aim of the 1984 Green Paper, lies in building systems between now and 1997 that will ensure that these "Principal Officials" are held publicly and directly accountable for their performance. There are many well established methods of doing this. I have spoken and written about these extensively over the past three years, without it appearing to have had any effect at all upon the Government. I will not describe these systems again today, but I have summarized them as an Annex to this talk.

Livelier Legco

But in emphasising the vital importance of improving systems of public accountability rather than extending systems of democratic political representation I do not wish to suggest that the present political reforms will not produce some improvement. If the coming elections bring into the Legislative Council such outspoken citizens as Mrs Elsie Elliott, Mr Szeto Wah, Mr Martin Li or Mr Henry Litton it will be a good thing.

Even if they turn out to be lone voices in the Council, if what they say chimes well with public feeling their views, reported in the media, will spread and influence far beyond the precincts of the new Chamber. And if because of their penetrating and outspoken questions in Council or in Committee officials are held more rigorously accountable for their performance, that will be all to the good.

No Chance

But I do not share the optimism of those who believe that the wholesale replacement of appointed members of the Legislative Council by elected members, whether directly or indirectly elected, will necessarily make the government act in a more representative way. There is absolutely no evidence to support such an assumption.