20年間，香港變了多少？年屆70歲的(supposed)香港特區政府二號人物、政務司司長張建宗，在任期只餘下一年的前提下，無聲無息就被免職，事前毫無徵兆，沒有風聲，沒有任何打算讓他順利過渡繼任人，而且還要即時生效，甚至等不及7月1日出席「回歸大典」。雖然他平庸，但唔比面至此，不啻是對傳統文職政務官赤裸裸的警告。特區政府會不會為張前司長搞farewell？不知道。

20年前，後來被《文匯》《大公》點名為「亂港四人幫」核心成員的政務司司長陳方安生榮休，當時非常體面，不同陣營的人都為她farewell，她也非常British地發表了離職感言。對比兩位任內離職的政務司司長的離職聲明，一切盡在不言中。

附錄一：政務司司長張建宗就其離任發表以下聲明：

我在一九七二年加入政府，於二○○七年七月獲任命為勞工及福利局局長，並於二○一七年一月獲任命為政務司司長。能夠在不同崗位服務香港社會近50年，尤其在香港回歸祖國以來能為國家及香港特別行政區效力，並參與落實「一國兩制」，是我莫大的榮幸，亦為我帶來無比的滿足感。

我非常感謝中央人民政府和各任行政長官多年來對我的信任和支持。我亦衷心感謝政府同事、議員、社會各界、傳媒和市民一直以來對我的支持和幫助。

我更要由衷感謝我的家人，他們多年來的默默支持、鼓勵和諒解，為我的工作帶來源源不絕的動力。

未來，我樂意通過不同機會繼續服務社會，貢獻國家。

我謹祝願香港長期繁榮穩定，長治久安，香港市民身心康泰。

完

附錄二：(Farewell) Speech by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mrs Anson Chan, at the Asia Society luncheon

In Retrospect and Anticipation

Ronnie, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

First of all, Ronnie, thank you for your very kind and warm welcome. All I can say is that it is wonderful to be part of Hong Kong''s history and I hope that history will be kind to me. I''d also like to thank all of you for being present here at this luncheon today at the tail end of one''s career to be received in this manner and by such an illustrious gathering is an honour indeed. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I would also like to thank you and the Asia Society for your unstinting support for Hong Kong. You and all those associated with Asia Society have been stalwart in your confidence in Hong Kong during the most difficult times, and the establishment of the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre in 1990 speaks eloquently to that.

And I want to thank you also for the invitation to address this large audience today, just 11 days before my retirement from my current post in the civil service of which I have had the privilege to be a member for 38 years, 7 months and two days. This is the last major speech I shall give in my official capacity - a valedictory, I suppose - but it will not, I daresay, be the last time I speak up for Hong Kong.

As I mulled over what I should say today, quite a few thoughts went through my mind. I looked back on some of the good days and bad, the great changes, the moments of high peaks and deep troughs. But I always came back to the sense of excitement and achievement associated with Hong Kong''s great post-war success in which I have been fortunate enough to have played a small part.

But how to encompass all this in the short time we have after this splendid lunch? A speech packed with reminiscences? A shopping list packaging our progress over the last 40 years? A "kiss and tell" speech revealing some real or imagined secrets or scandals from the past? Sorry, that''s not my style.

So, I have decided to do what I usually do, and that is to speak frankly on a number of issues about which I feel strongly. I feel strongly about them because they are important to the people of Hong Kong, the future success of the SAR and, by extension, to the contribution the SAR can make to our nation.

In short, I want to ask the people of Hong Kong what values they want to protect and preserve in the SAR. I want to ask them to think about those things that give us the edge over our competitors in the region, including cities in the Mainland like Shanghai. And I intend to answer my own questions by saying what I believe they should be. I don''t think anyone in this great hall, or outside it for that matter, will be greatly surprised to hear what I believe those values to be. I have been espousing them in one form or another for most of my public life.

But before I do so, I want to indulge in just a little bit of nostalgia. After nearly four decades in the civil service, I think I''ve earned at least that much. I was looking at figures the other day which drew some comparisons of life in Hong Kong back in 1962, when I joined the civil service, with the situation as it is today.

For example, in 1962 great parts of the New Territories still moved to the rhythm of the seasons of planting and harvest. Buffalo could still be seen in the paddy fields. The population stood at 600,000. Today, there are 3.4 million people living in nine modern high rise new towns beyond the Lion Rock. The fulcrum of our urban metropolis has shifted dramatically in the space of a generation.

Life expectancy in 1962 was 68 for men and 75 for women. Today it is 77 and 82 respectively. Our GDP has increased 150 times over during that period, on average by 14% a year. GDP per capita has multiplied 70 times, from $2,619 in 1962 to $187,105 last year. That''s an average annual growth rate of 12%. In 1962, a quarter of a million visitors came to Hong Kong. Last year the number reached a record 13.6 million.

And finally - just one more comparison that is close to my heart. When Katherine Fok and I joined the Administrative Service, as cadets in 1962, there was but one woman in the entire Administrative Service. Today there are 275, or over one in five of the directorate structure. Eight of our Principal Officials are women. Progress indeed.

I have presented this snapshot of how far we have come not to blow the trumpet for government - although I have never shied away from claiming credit for us when it has been due - but rather to make the straightforward point that for all of our faults, real or imagined, the government must have done something right somewhere along the way. I am the first to acknowledge that the creators of Hong Kong''s success are its people. I lead the applause for their great qualities - decent, tolerant, hard working, entrepreneurial, fast on their feet, highly-motivated, innovative, outward looking, politically pragmatic, worldly-wise.

But I firmly believe that the Hong Kong administration has over the years provided the physical and legislative infrastructure and the commonsense consensus on social and political issues. We have governed with a light touch and have given our citizens the flexibility and freedom to pursue their dreams and realize their ambitions for themselves and their families.

In many ways, our people stand as a monument to the virtues of self-reliance. They have never been afraid to embrace change and turn it to their advantage. They have never been afraid to embrace risk, and challenge it.

They have been able to do this because history bequeathed to us the vital institutional organs of a free society : the rule of law, an independent judiciary and a clean and accountable administration run by men and women of good conscience. We have here in Hong Kong a civil service that is built on the twin pillars of meritocracy and political neutrality. In this age of globalisation, instant communication and overnight change, this might sound like a quaintly old-fashioned thing to say. But these institutions are so critical to our stability and prosperity that they must endure and survive every fad or fashion or paradigm shift that comes our way.

I can still clearly recall a conversation I had with a senior member of the administrative service not long after I had joined the government. I could not have been much more than 23 years old, but his words have stayed with me since. Anson, he said, you must always remember that you have joined a very special service which has an excellent reputation built up by the people who have gone before you. Your obligations as an administrative officer are simple. You must serve the people well and you must serve them with honour. Remember that duty and honour must always go together.

It''s advice I give to young colleagues today.

This is not to suggest that civil servants are trapped in a time warp. The civil service is ever changing, and reforms over the decades - and indeed over the last three years - have seen major advances in efficiency, productivity, cultural attitudes, client- awareness, commitment to higher standards of service delivery, intolerance of corruption and incompetence and - most important of all - commitment to the values of openness, transparency and accountability. All of this has been built on the foundations of the meritocracy and political neutrality I have already described. These values are the one constant, the starting point for all else.

But is this enough to meet the demands of the new millennium? Should we be moving in different directions with changing times? What will provide the best value for the governing systems of the 21st century which genuinely seek to be world class?

This last question was eloquently answered by the distinguished British historian and political journalist, Professor Peter Hennessy, at a conference in Hong Kong entitled " A Civil Service for Asia''s World City" in January last year. Professor Hennessy''s answer was as follows :

- That in return for a degree of permanence, a largely career civil service recruited on ability alone will in all circumstances facilitate evidence-driven government by speaking truth unto power as its primary and overriding duty.

- And that allied to this is an ethic and a determination that public money will be raised in an equitable and transparent way and used in a corruption free fashion according to those purposes and only those purposes, approved by the legislative part of government.

I am sure you recognize this system so succinctly described. I know it well. It is the system that has been patiently and deliberately constructed over decades in the Hong Kong civil service. It is a system that has seen us through thick and thin. It is a role model I can readily sign up to.

And "speak truth unto power"? What does this mean? It means giving your best advice to superiors based on the best information available and objective analysis even when you know it may not be music to their ears. That is what I and my colleagues have been trained and encouraged to do from the first day of our service. This, in turn, builds trust between officials upwards, downwards and sideways.

This collegiate approach among officials whose relationship is built on trust rather than personal or political whim also provides the protection for individuals within the system. They know they can tender advice without fear or favour, safe in the knowledge that even the most unwelcome advice would not lead to blighted career prospects or unpleasant postings out of earshot of those who may not like what you have to say.

In such a system, currying favour, political correctness, second-guessing and shoe-shining will not get you very far. These are, however, the weaknesses inherent in a more politicized system which, in my view, tends to encourage lower productivity and less accountability but discourage "speaking truth unto power". In examining how best to enhance the accountability of principal officials, the Chief Executive has made it clear that "we will maintain the stability of the civil service structure, preserve the principles of permanence and neutrality of the civil service, and maintain a highly efficient, professional and clean government".

I place heavy emphasis on this matter because, like Professor Hennessy, I believe passionately in the notion of a politically-neutral civil service recruited on the basis of intellectual ability rather than political patronage. In other words, the idea of a lifetime career built around the profession of government. Of course the civil service can benefit by the infusion of outside talent. It has done so in the past and will no doubt do so in the future. But the system must be bigger than any individual, whether from within or without.

The values on which I place such store have been put to the test in recent years, both before and since the transition. I believe the civil service has been more than up to the test, and there are more tests to come. That is made certain by the Basic Law timetable for the development of the democratic process. Our community has big decisions to make in the next few years, in particular about the pace of reaching our ultimate constitutional goal of universal suffrage for the Legislative Council and the possible popular election of the Chief Executive.

I have made it plain in the past that I believe these issues raise such fundamental questions about governance in the SAR that public debate on them cannot be delayed for too much longer. I have not changed my mind about this. We must get the decision right in 2007 and we stand the best chance of doing so if we have a long, measured, structured and rational debate about where to go and how to get there.

In my view there is already too much artificial division in the community. Name-calling and suspicion based on outdated and emotive political labels are no substitute for reasoned discussion. Why do some people insist on using terms like pro-China or anti-China? Or even pro-British? Surely we are all pro-Hong Kong. And that means also that Hong Kong people are as much a part of the country as the other 1.3 billion Chinese on the Mainland, and proud of it.

The Administration is required by our constitution to be accountable to the Legislative Council. Constructive engagement between the Administration and all members of the legislature must be the right way forward. Despite our differences, together we have achieved a great deal in the past. The legislature can take the moral high ground by putting aside prejudices, point-scoring and partisan political ambitions and burying their differences in a way that takes into account the wider interests of the community as a whole. This is what the community expects of our legislators. I believe the Government will continue to play its part in facilitating reasoned discussions within the legislature by engaging its members in policy formulation at an early stage.

In my experience Hong Kong has moved forward on a belief in progress and fair-minded consensus building, where decisions are arrived at by reason and compromise. I believe that''s what people still want. It is not surprising to me that they ask whether the current constitutional arrangements are capable of delivering the political goods.

All the more reason for the community to come together in a pragmatic way to decide, in the spirit of give and take, on the constitutional arrangements that best suit our unique circumstances. And those unique circumstances do, of course, include the interest Beijing will naturally take in this matter. While any debate cannot ignore this fact of life, it does not necessarily have to subdue or distort it.

I say this with some conviction because my own experience as Chief Secretary for Administration since 1 July 1997 has assured me that on the whole, the Beijing leadership is happy to let the SAR make its own way within our high degree of autonomy. Even during the controversial CFA referral, Be...