The Secretary for Home Affairs Tsui Ying-wai, the Director of Immigration Au Ka-hong, the Political Assistant to the Secretary for Development Fung Ying-lun and four Legislative Council members left the Penny's Bay Quarantine Centre late on Monday (17th), ending the 14-day compulsory quarantine.
As directed by the Chief Executive, the accountability officer will self-monitor at home for seven days until the end of next Monday (24th).
Senior officials attended birthday parties when the fifth wave of the epidemic was budding, and society naturally expected political accountability. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was also asked about the disciplinary investigation of 13 officials before attending the Executive Council on Tuesday (18th).
Carrie Lam simply reiterated: "Once the investigation is completed, I will definitely explain it to the public. I can assure you that whether it is the investigation of Cathay Pacific or the attendance of SAR government officials at the banquet, it will not be over... For a moment, the investigation has not been completed."
Procedural justice is a must, and it is appropriate to decide how to take disciplinary action only after a clear investigation, but this is only from the perspective of the Chief Executive as the official's boss.
As for the accountability officials themselves, especially the Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr Xu Yingwei, how to take political responsibility and where to go, in fact, there is no need to wait for the investigation to be completed and the Chief Executive to decide.
To be fair, the Secretary for Home Affairs is not the leader of the anti-epidemic work, but the Secretary for Food and Health.
But even if he is not the number one person, the Secretary for Home Affairs has played a very important role in the entire epidemic prevention and anti-epidemic work.
This includes promoting all sectors of society to fight the epidemic together, caring for the elderly, disadvantaged groups and frontline staff who are on the job.
When Xu Yingwei took office as director the year before, he also said, "Everyone knows that under the epidemic, our first job is to fight the epidemic together."
Politicians should make their own judgments
Xu Yingwei has served in the government for more than ten years. Before taking up his current post, he had served as the political assistant to the Secretary for Home Affairs and the deputy secretary for the Labour and Welfare Bureau. He is no stranger to political sensitivity and political accountability.
According to the Code for Officials of the Political Appointment System, the basic principles that accountable officials must abide by include "concentrating on the performance of their duties", "protecting the reputation of public office", and "keeping the highest standards of personal character and conduct at all times."
Whether attending a birthday banquet at an important time of epidemic prevention conforms to the above principles, he himself should not need a disciplinary investigation, and he knows it well.
As for the DAB to which Xu Yingwei belongs, this is also an important lesson.
The DAB is committed to training political talents and actively joining the government governance team.
In addition to Xu Yingwei, there are currently incumbents Xu Zhengyu, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Chen Baili, Deputy Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, and Hu Jianmin, Deputy Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs. Liu Jianghua is the most remembered in the past.
Born from a political party, he should be more politically sensitive than some civil servants, so why did he get involved in such matters as banquets during the epidemic?
Last year, the Democratic Alliance for Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB) held a course on the concept of governance. In it, it pointed out that politicians must pay attention to the people, and quoted President Xi Jinping as saying that "the way to protect the people is to observe their sufferings."
If they uphold this philosophy, will their political talents slack off attending birthday banquets when the mutant virus strains have been introduced to Hong Kong and the Mochizukilou group has broken out one after another?
Among the 20 lectures on the subject of the study course, one of them is "Practice and Reform of Political Accountability". I wonder what they think is political accountability for the current situation?
In the final analysis, it is a strict thinking person who has no sense of governance. It is necessary to be strict with oneself in order to fight the epidemic and face up to the problem in order to solve the problem.