Contents

Editorial - By John Wan
President's Message - By President Raymond Sin
Letters to Editor

editorial

Accountability

The hot issue in town this week is probably the Chief Executive's plan to make his Administration more accountable and transparent. Speculation had been rife on whom he would appoint and how many would be appointed. Politicians, academics and opinion formers had a field day, aided and abetted by a free, albeit sometimes irresponsible, press. One oft repeated though somewhat peculiar remark has been that Mr. Tung has created the new structure to ensure that all powers can be centralized under the Chief Executive and so that he can administer the government more effectively. In his reply to legislators today, Mr. Tung made it very clear that the Chief Executive derived his authority from the Basic Law and hence would require no further instruments or administrative device to wield more powers, adding that the primary motivation for the present move was to make his Administrative more accountable and transparent.

We have often heard that Rotary is not a political organization, but we have all seen that many Rotarians are concerned with best practices in public administration, corporate governance and civic duties. Indeed many Rotarians in the District have taken up onerous public offices voluntarily, very often at the expenses of their own private avocation and business. At critical times, should not Rotarians speak up individuals or collectively in the interest of the public and for social justice?

Back to the Rotary District, there were occasions when leaders in the District had brought in reforms to make the District Administration more accountable and transparent. However, as with most reforms in history, the passage had been difficult, not helped by a general apathy and perhaps ignorance among the membership. If this is how business and professional people handle the business of the organization to which they have voluntarily subscribed, little wonder why they would not speak up for the business of the wider community.

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President's Message

By President Raymond Sin

"Evolution 7"

Time flies very fast. I saw the movie "E.T." last night with my family. I first saw this movie back in Christmas of 1982. I remember the time well because it was my 1st Christmas when I studied in Glasgow, Scotland. I told my daughter that I did not remember anything about that movie despite the fact that I watched it for the second time. The reason was that I fell asleep right after the movie started and slept throughout. It is a great movie. It does not look like an oldie although it was produced some 20 years ago. A movie is only a movie. In real life and real society, a lot happen over as short a time as a few years, not to say 20 years.

Everything changes fast in HK. This is particularly true for those who had moved abroad for some years to pursue their studies or for migration purposes and who had come back. Nowadays people complain there are not enough historic sites to attract tourism. The worst example, which affected everyone of us very badly, is the crash of the property market. No one before 1998 would ever imagine that the market could fall by as much as 60%. The unemployment rate has also shot up high (close to 7%) in Hong Kong. And the word "deflation" becomes a popular term in the newspapers. Professional Clinical Psychologists advise people not to hold on to the "good old days". You must let it go. Then you will be better equipped to cope with the bad experience in this realistic world. Not only has the material world changed a lot, the attitude, the mentality, expectation and the way of thinking of people have also changed quite drastically too. Starting from this year, dentists are required to put a note in the waiting area of dental clinics saying "Please feel free to ask your dentist about the treatment cost" which was an unbelievable practice to doctors in Central many years ago. Since you cannot specify sexual inclination in putting up an employment advertisement under the laws of sexual discrimination, can you imagine that I will employ a man to be my nurse? Nowadays, people tend to expect more but pay less. If you want your life easy, you have to bear with the reality that many a time it will treat you very differently with what you expect. If you cannot do this, that could be a tragedy for you. Luckily enough, I have never believed in absolute freedom or absolute right or wrong (except the Truth from God). I will always listen and strive for the best balance out of every issue. I practice the art of Balance everyday in treating my patients in the clinic. You will never be a good doctor if you push the patient to follow your own plan without looking at other conditions like expectations of him/her and that of his/her family, age of the patient, their time commitment and of course their financial commitment in particular.

Recently our Kingspark Bulletin has slightly changed its circulation format. With concern from our members about their privacy and their choice of not wanting outsiders to read their articles, the Board of Directors decided to only circulate the Bulletin among our members. This change is meant to attract more members to write and to write more freely. This in turn makes the Bulletin more interesting and more capable of serving as a communication tool among members (members know about each others better). And we will also produce the Web Version of the Bulletin in our Kingspark's Website so that members' articles can still be shared by larger groups of Rotarians if they so wish to. By means of this new arrangement, members now have the freedom of choosing whether only the members or both the members and also anyone in the public can read their articles. Of course, this new practice will only be meaningful if members do write articles to the Bulletin. Some may argue that this is a backward move in policy. I disagree with that. They may be just too narrow-minded and not be able to appreciate matters in different angles. In the old days, people thought that the world was a Square. They were afraid of stepping too far from where they were to avoid 'falling from the world'. It was men who were courageous enough that had found out that the world is round.

One of my favorite sport cars called "Evolution" has just been put out to the market with its 7th generation (we call it E7). You see, life evolves very quickly.

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Letters to Editor

You are welcome to write to Club Webmaster John Wan on any topic, particularly in response to articles published in Kingspark News. We would publish all contributions as long as the authors identify themselves, the contents are not offensive or abusive, and would not offend common decency or common sense. You need not be a Rotarian to write to us and you have a choice to withhold your name in the published version. Where the contents make reference to statements or policies of individuals or organizations, we would try to obtain a response fro the latter for publication in the same issue if possible.

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