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God knows it's foolish pride that drives politicians
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Air pollution Worst since January
1. God knows it's foolish pride that drives politicians
JAKE
VAN DER KAMP, SCMP 26 April 2003 Imagine
that you are a true believer in the ability of government to right the world's
wrongs and fix its ailments. Many
people hold such beliefs. Government has increasingly supplanted God with the
gradual demise of organised religion around the world and where once people used
to get on their knees to pray, they now get on their feet to form lobbies, make
speeches and wave placards. For every problem there is now one instant response:
"Government should . . ." and you can fill in the blanks. It
is clearly a widely held belief in the Tung Chee-hwa administration, although
never clearly stated, and perhaps it is excusable there as it was also a theme
of imperial administration in China for thousands of years. Many Hong Kong people
still readily subscribe to it. Just listen to the chorus on the atypical pneumonia
outbreak - "Tung should have . . . why didn't Tung . . . if only Tung had.
. ." And
so this week Tung did - an HK$11.8 billion package of measures to address the
economic fallout of atypical pneumonia and to stimulate growth, done because he
and his colleagues felt they had to do something to stave of accusations of negligence
and because, as we all know, government has the ability to fix Hong Kong's ailments.
Now if you were to ask me, and I am full of conceit about my superior knowledge
of how to fix Hong Kong's ailments, I would have said the best way to structure
a very general stimulus package, such as Mr Tung's proved to be, is to adopt a
three-month suspension of payments to the Mandatory Provident Fund, both from
employees and employers. This
would have hit the nail on the head, direct relief for the people who contribute
most to the health of our economy, widely spread, equitably spread, and with no
direct cost to our economy other than a short period of slightly less support
for the share prices of some big companies on the stock market, which the intended
beneficiaries of the MPF do not seem to want to buy anyway just now. But
this idea has had short shrift. There are undoubtedly problems and, more than
that, there are now government officials who have built their careers on the MPF
and would rightly see this as the thin end of the wedge to dissolution of the
entire scheme, an even better idea. So
what we had instead was a grab-bag of measures, few of which had any particular
relevance to atypical pneumonia. Check
the front page of this newspaper yesterday and you will see that it fell on the
South China Morning Post to launch a campaign to suit doctors and nurses up properly
for work in intensive care units. From
the Tung administration it was a mixture of unnecessary tax rebates, misdirected
loan guarantees, cuts in fees for government services, as if these were not already
far below cost, and hand-wringing about how the government may not now be able
to meet its deficit reduction targets. How convenient an excuse that HK$11.8 billion
will prove to be. Me?
I shall take doctors and nurses who are properly equipped in hospitals and happier
to approach me in case I catch atypical pneumonia. Give me the choice of this
or a tax rebate and Mr Tung can keep his rebate. And
that goes to the heart of what is wrong with this rescue package. It was undertaken
because Mr Tung and his colleagues felt they had to do something and, not knowing
what to do, fell back on the idea of a general stimulus even though they had a
recent report on their hands from the government economist, who calculated that
every HK$1 spent on stimulus produces only HK50 cents extra in gross domestic
product. It is what you get when you have a government that suffers from illusions
about the extent of its ability to make a difference but is heavily made up of
people who have had no experience of government. Just
look again at that picture of the line-up of Mr Tung and five of his principal
officials when the package was announced. Of the six only two had made their careers
in public affairs before taking on their present positions. Of
course they were lost for ideas on what to do and the hypocrisy of scheduled visits
to carefully pre-scrubbed hygiene blackspots only made things worse. There
are real limits to what government officials can usefully do in times like this
and what they could do they have not done. It
took this newspaper to lead the way in showing them. Congratulations boss, a superb
idea. Now let us see Mr Tung offer to buy a few thousand of those suits. Email
Jake van der Kamp at jakeva@scmp.com.
2. Air pollution Worst since January
Clifford
Lo, SCMP 27 April 2003 
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