Speaking in the first part of an interview published by AM370 on Wednesday, former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen has said that he “should have actively developed land” during his terms of office as Chief Executive from 2005 to 2012. The interview series will continue for three days, ending on Friday.
“You need to accept criticism from others – some are correct, some may not be accurate, but you need to accept Hongkongers’ criticisms!” he said.
He was reflecting on his land policy, which involved stopping land sales and building no more housing units under the home ownership scheme in order to end a slump in the housing market after the SARS epidemic in 2003.
He also talked about the difficulties of releasing new land, saying that “having different sides support you is very difficult, there are environmental activists, those from the local community, and individuals with interests… ” The biggest bottleneck for increasing housing units, he said, was developing land.
The current government under Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying is attempting to provide more housing units through increasing land supply, particularly through developing the northeast New Territories. The plans have been met with stark opposition from activists and residents.
Different challenges
When asked what he thought about people feeling nostalgic for his era and fellow former Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa’s era, he said that “every Chief Executive faces different challenges, and I will not feel that it will be different if I am doing the job, because you don’t know all the details, you don’t know whether somebody has done things correctly or not.”
Regarding Rafael Hui, the former chief secretary who was jailed for graft, Tsang said that he was “praying for him every day” and that he was one of his best friends. Tsang himself was also involved in a corruption case in 2012, when he was said to have allegedly accepted favours from tycoons.
Tsang will face trial next January on two counts of misconduct in public office related to his failure to disclose that he was renting a three-storey property in Shenzhen, which was owned by an investor in a radio broadcast company then seeking a licence from the government.
