Hong Kong’s Embattled Leader Steps Down
By KEITH BRADSHER and THOMAS CRAMPTON
Published: March 10, 2005
HONG KONG, March 10 – Tung Chee-hwa submitted his resignation late this afternoon to China’s leaders after nearly eight years as Hong Kong’s chief executive, beginning the first transfer of power since Britain returned the territory to Chinese rule in 1997.
The resignation, which mainland officials are expected to accept in the next several days, brings to an end a difficult tenure during which Hong Kong weathered the Asian financial crisis, a collapse in property prices, a SARS epidemic and sharply rising unemployment.
A succession of crises here gave rise to the biggest democracy movement in China since the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989, with huge demonstrations filling the streets here in 2003 and 2004.
Mr. Tung, who is 67 and has a reputation as a workaholic, said at a news conference that his resignation two years before the completion of his second, five-year term in 2007 was solely the result of declining health and advancing years. He said his doctor had warned him to change his habit of working 16 to 18 hours a day and almost never taking a vacation. He strongly denied widespread speculation that Beijing officials had demanded his resignation.
President Hu Jintao of China delivered a very public dressing-down to Mr. Tung last December when both men visited Macao, telling him in front of television cameras to, "sum up experiences, identify shortcomings, sharpen administrative abilities and continue to raise the quality of governing."
James To, a senior Democratic Party lawmaker, said that Mr. Tung’s resignation was at least partly a victory for street protesters who have been calling for him to step down for the last two years to take responsibility for the territory’s economic weaknesses and political disputes.
"His resignation is at least partly due to people power, so it is partly the people’s victory," he said.
Mr. Tung pointed out that the economy here is thriving this year and that social stability has returned, with no large street protests since New Year’s Day.
Under the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, a chief executive can only step down because of ill health or governmental paralysis involving relations with the legislature. Mr. Tung said that he had reconsidered his desire to remain in government after it was difficult for him to remain standing through his hourlong annual policy address in January. He described taking painkillers before the speech.
Mr. Tung nonetheless remained standing throughout his nearly hourlong news conference today, although he said near the end that he needed to sit down and asked an aide to cut off questions.
Asked what had been his most difficult time in office and his greatest regret, Mr. Tung said that his hardest choice and biggest regret had been to step down two years before his current term ends on June 30, 2007.
Under the Basic Law, Donald Tsang, the chief secretary and second-ranking official here, will become the acting chief executive for up to six months. The 800-member Electoral Committee, composed of prominent businesspeople, professionals and politicians, will meet within 120 days to select a new chief executive.
Mr. Tsang is widely expected to be chosen, as he has far more experience in the senior ranks of government than any potential rivals.
By stepping down this week, Mr. Tung makes sure that his successor can be elected by current committee members, most of whom are strongly loyal to Beijing. Their five-year terms run until July 13. A new committee must be elected after that by 160,000 of Hong Kong’s 6.9 million people, with mainly business leaders, neighborhood politicians and professionals allowed to vote.
While the complex rules for choosing committee members make it certain that the next committee will also have a pro-Beijing majority, growing democratic sentiment among middle-class professionals makes it likely that the next committee would at least consider candidates who favor greater pluralism here.
Albert Chen, a professor and former dean of Hong Kong University’s law school, said that the consensus of legal officials here was that the Basic Law calls for the next chief executive chosen this summer to serve a full five-year term. But a series of Beijing officials have said in the past week that Mr. Tung’s successor should only serve the two-year remainder of his term, following mainland practice.
Mr. Tung said that mainland officials would decide this point by the time they accept his resignation. He is scheduled to become on Saturday a vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a high-level advisory group in Beijing.
American officials have had "good discussions on the future of Hong Kong" over the years with Mr. Tung and his team, said Susan Stevenson, a spokeswoman for the United States Consulate here. She added that "the United States strongly supports the aspirations of the Hong Kong people for democracy through electoral reform and universal suffrage as provided for by the Basic Law and within the framework of ‘one country two systems.’ "
China took Hong Kong back from Britain with a promise that it would leave the territory’s economic and political system intact for 50 years. But many here have complained that Hong Kong’s autonomy has eroded during Mr. Tung’s tenure.
The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing has issued legally binding interpretations of the Basic Law to overturn a court decision here on who qualifies for Hong Kong residency, and to block any attempt to introduce direct elections for the chief executive in 2007 and for all seats in the legislature in 2008.
While Mr. Tung was not directly responsible for much of the trouble he faced, critics said he reacted too slowly and with excessive concern about Beijing’s point of view.
Taking office at the stroke of midnight as China took sovereignty of the former British colony on July 1, 1997, he was quickly faced with the fallout from the Asian financial crisis. Property prices in the territory plunged, unemployment shot up, but action taken by Mr. Tsang, the financial secretary then, managed to fend off speculators who sought to break the Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the American dollar.
Another crisis came in the spring of 2003, when nearly 1,800 residents of the territory and visitors came down with a mysterious and virulent respiratory disease later called severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Mr. Tung’s popularity fell into a slump from which it never recovered as SARS retreated and more than half a million people took to the streets of Hong Kong criticizing the government and Mr. Tung’s plan to introduce stringent internal security legislation. Street protests forced him to put the laws on hold and then withdraw them entirely.
Hundreds of thousands marched against the government again last July to call for direct elections as soon as possible.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 