Published in HKEJ ” professional eye” on 6th May 2010

Christine HUNG
The Professional Commons
www.procommons.org.hk

The coming “July 1 rally” is expected to teem with clamor and grievance as what had happened in the past seven years. It reminds us of Donald Tsang’s remaining term of less than 2 years. In this connection, we will have a serious review on governance problems in Tsang’s era in a bid to provide constructive advice to the incumbent government. This might also be regarded as a necessary reference, even a warning, for those who intend on running the next CE.

How does Tsang’s administration perform? Results from a recent opinion poll by the HK Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, CUHK, showed that a quarter of respondents preferred a more radical means in a quest for Government’s response to their request. This not only reflects failure of Tsang’s governance, but also suggests a warning signal on possible outbreak of public malaise.

Fiscal policy without a vision

Public finance has an important role to play in improving people’s livelihood and boosting the development of the local economy. Its principle of fiscal management and financial condition accordingly to some extent betoken the level of effective governance of the incumbent government. The performance of Tsang’s administration on public finance, under the constraint of the “financial envelope” arrangement and the lack of long-term vision, has been nothing but descended into a mere fiscal management.

The fiscal strategy of the HKSAR Government (hereafter the Government) has mainly been under the influence of two aspects. First and foremost, it has been laid down in Basic Law that the Government should be prudent in fiscal management, which is regarded as the most prominent principle by administrations of any term. Second, the Government closely follows the old practice of the colonial administration regarding outgoings, including reluctance to expand recurrent expenditure, striving for a breakeven between government revenue and expenditure, etc. It is obvious that the Government has exaggerated the importance of financial prudency to be the holiest and overbearing one without taking other social factors into consideration. In so doing, this principle is no longer a guide to achieve social goals of wellbeing but a mere “iron-crown spell” having them repulsed.

Caring government: a mere lip service

Despite the fact that there existed apparent coverage in Policy Addresses and FS’s Budget Speeches of the last few years concerning the establishment of a caring society, many policy measures have demonstrated that the Government attached greater importance to its financial stability rather than the need of the ordinary people. This explains the bad impression against Tsang’s administration of being mean, in which it haggles over with general public every penny to be spent, not to mention strong will to relieve those in deep distress. For instance, Tsang had once committed to increase “Old Age Allowance” to HK$1,000 on one hand, but proposed to introduce means test on the other hand. Against this background, there is a general view that the Government has shown no respect and sincerity to the elderly. The same happened to Government’s recent proposal of increasing subsided residential care spaces for the elderly. All these somewhat result in social outcry of extensive scale.

The strategy of Tsang’s continued reluctance to increase recurrent expenditure can be vividly reflected by a highly-anticipated consultation on “Hong Kong’s long-term social welfare planning” by the Social Welfare Advisory Committee. It is disappointing that the improvement in social service provision is not a matter of concern. Instead, it focuses on developing a “sustainable and affordable social welfare system” under the “users pay principle”, which is considered as one of the “guiding principles”. In social welfare service planning, it is worried that the fiscal consideration, in view of Government’s governing logic, is overriding the need of the underprivileged. The public only considers sporadic generosity from the Government such as additional subsided residential care places for the elderly and handicapped, and the services for the rehabilitation of ex-mentally ill patients, etc as measures in a bid to pacify social dissatisfaction under intense public pressure.

Effective Financing is what Healthcare Reform actually needs

The proposed healthcare reform is actually worrying. It is obvious that this reform does not aim to improve the standard of medical services but to make well-off middle class people responsible for their own medical service payment, and finally leave the queue. By doing so, more funds would be drawn for the provision of medical services. However, many middle class people could no longer enjoy low-priced public medical services, which is the only “welfare” they are eligible to enjoy. As far as the Government is concerned, it has been reiterated that public medical services should target the needy, anticipating that means test will be introduced in the foreseeable future.

The education sector is considered another area of calamity. Despite its sounded emphasis on development of knowledge-based economy, Tsang’s administration insists on maintaining the number of subsided undergraduate degree places at the existing level of 14,500 per year. The Government’s wishful thinking is the possible decrease in demand on subsided tertiary education in the face of decreasing youth population. Even worse, there is an imbalanced development in university’s course composition. Many humanities and social science faculties or departments in some universities have given way to those supposedly beneficial to economic developments. To this end, Tsang’s idea to develop education is for the mere sake of earning revenue from overseas. The vision and mission of university education seems not to be a major issue of concern.

It seems that Tsang’s administration has no regret to spend tens of billions on the “Ten Major Infrastructure” Projects but pay minimal effort to those in relation to the betterment of livelihood, notwithstanding embracement of fiscal reserve of astronomical amount. Despite this, Tsang’s administration sometimes responds by a mere tinkering like appropriation addition of small amount, or just muddling through. To conclude, infrastructural investment, in his eye, is apparently more important than improvement of people’s quality of life. As a result, Hong Kong is amongst the worst in the world in terms of the widening of wealth gap, while people’s anger has been smoldering on the edge of breaking down.