關於 power crunch china ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

以下係我已經喺WhatsApp收咗三次嘅前高等法院英女王御用大律師，Henry Litton (列顕倫)* QC ；給香港市民的一封信:～ (裏便了無新意, 不過有兩個好處. 1) 洋人寫係唔同啲, 仲要係有名望嘅大法官, 特別有說服力 2）啲英文寫得好靚, 仲有中文翻譯可以學習英文。

Henry Litton (列顕倫)* QC was the Judge of the highest Court in Hong Kong. He retired in 2015.

英女皇御用大律師列顕倫(亨利·利頓)QC，是香港最高法院的法官。他於2015年退休。

The following is what he’s written...

以下是他寫的。

There are few certainties in life. One of them is this: The common law system underpinning Hong Kong’s “core values” is destined to expire in 27 years’ time. The One Country Two Systems formula was designed to last for 50 years and no more. Hence Article 5 of the Basic Law. There is no mechanism in the Basic Law for the system to continue beyond 30 June 2047.

生活中很少有確定性。其中之一是：支撐香港“核心價值”的普通法制度將在27年後失效。一國兩制方案的設計時限是50年，之後，再也沒有了。因此，“基本法”第五條清楚指出。2047年6月30日以後，“基本法”中沒有任何機制讓這制度繼續下去。

All the calls for Freedom, Democracy etc have no meaning if the common law crumbles.

如果普通法崩潰，所有要求“自由、民主”等的呼籲都是沒有意義。

If the protesters truly value their professed aims, *their focus should be on demonstrating to Beijing and to the rest of the world that the One Country Two Systems formula works, and to promote an atmosphere in which Beijing feels comfortable with the system – and when the time comes, to extend the Basic Law for another 50 years, 100 years*. Then liberal democratic norms and values might have a chance to flourish.

如果抗議者真的誠心誠意的重視他們宣稱的目標，*他們的重點、重心，應該是向北京和世界其他地方展示“一國兩制”的方案是有效的，並推展“一國兩制”的成功實施。令北京對這一制度感到寛心舒泰的環境下 - 當時機成熟時，說服北京將“基本法”再延長50年，100年*。那麼，自由、民主的模式、準則和價值觀還可能有延續蓬勃、活躍的機會。

Crunch time is not 27 years away. It is just round the corner. For Hong Kong to continue as one of the world’s greatest financial and trading centres, planning for the future must necessarily look 20 -30 years ahead. So the hard question will soon be asked: is the common law system to continue beyond June 2047 ? The answer lies in Beijing and nowhere else.

擔心不安的時刻不是27年後的事。就在拐角處。要使香港繼續成為世界上最大的金融和貿易中心之一，對未來的規劃必須著眼於未來20-30年。因此，我們很快便會提出一個棘手的問題：普通法制度是否會延續至2047年6月以後？答案就在北京，而不是其他任何地方。

The last time this issue arose – back in 1982 – Hong Kong had the backing of Great Britain. This time Hong Kong stands alone. And, up to this point, Hong Kong has demonstrated for all the world to see that the One Country Two Systems formula is extremely fragile: and, if the unrest continues, it would surely fracture beyond any hope of recall.

回顧1982年，上一次被問到這個問題的時候，當時香港是得到了大英帝國的支持。而這一次，香港只能孤掌難鳴。到目前為止，香港已經向全世界展示了“一國兩制”這方案是極其脆弱的：如果動亂繼續下去，它肯定會褫奪，無望地被撤銷。

It is beyond the power of the Hong Kong SAR government to devise the governing model for the future. Pressing the Hong Kong government to promote greater democracy is futile. Rightly or wrongly, that power lies in Beijing. Nowhere else. Hong Kong enjoys freedoms found nowhere else in China. To think that unlawful assemblies and demonstrations, and violence in the streets, would soften Beijing’s attitude towards Hong Kong is absurd. Common sense suggests it would have the opposite effect.

為未來設計治理模式，是超出了香港特別行政區政府的權力範圍。要迫使香港政府促進更大的民主是徒勞的。不管是你喜歡也好。不喜歡也好。權力就是在北京。沒有別的地方了。香港現在享有中國其他地方沒有的自由。認為非法集會示威和街頭暴力會軟化北京的對香港的態度是荒謬的。常識表明，它只會產生相反的效果。

But there are deep social issues which the SAR government can redress, having regard in particular to the huge foreign currency reserves it holds:USD425 billion – by far the largest in the world, enough to guarantee public servants’ pensions hundreds of times over. And yet Hong Kong’s social services are crumbling, hospitals are understaffed, public education is poor, teachers are ill-paid, young people cannot afford to rent even the most substandard apartment, the gap between rich and poor is ever-widening.

但是，有一些深層次的社會問題是特區政府可以解決的，特別是考慮到特區政府擁有世界上最龐大的外匯儲備：4,250億美元 - 是政府公務員的長俸所需要的保證金額的數以百倍。然而，香港的社會服務卻每況愈下，醫院人手不足，全民所需的教育不論在質素及資源都極差，教師薪酬偏低。年輕人怎都難以負擔租用即使是最不合標準的居所，社會上，貧富差距在不斷拉大。

The laissez-faire policy of the colonial government has been carried to extremes by the SAR government in the past 20-odd years. The rich have prospered in the meanwhile whilst the bulk of the people suffered. The influx of Mainlanders under the One-Way Permit system has caused great strain on all services. The people’s needs have been neglected. The young see little prospect of a fulfilling future and even university graduates find difficulty in meaningful employment.

大英帝國殖民地政府的自由放任政策在過去二十多年來一直被特區政府極端化。與此同時，大多數富人們卻在此期間更加繁榮昌盛、更加富裕起來，而相反普通市民却受苦了。在單程證制度下，內地人士大量湧入，對所有服務造成更大壓力。市民的需求、需要被忽視。年輕人看不出有向上游、向上流的任何富圖的希望。甚至大學畢業生也很難找到有合識、合意的工作。

These, I suggest, are the deep-seated ills which sustain the fire of discontent in the wider community, and bring hundreds of thousands to march in the streets. These are not matters which a commission of inquiry can resolve.

我認為，這些水深火熱的社會問題及弊病，這些憤懣之火已經廣泛地蔓延在整個社會，並促使數以十萬人走上街頭。這些都不是一個所謂諮詢委員會可以解決。

The media here is full of Hong Kong stories, and of course footage of the riotous behaviour on the streets: what empty slogans, meaningless rhetoric the protesters display ……….In watching these events I am reminded of the prayer attributed to Saint Francis:

今天的媒體充斥著不同形式的香港事件，當然有街頭暴力行為的鏡頭：抗議者們展示的空洞口號和毫無意義的粗言穢語。…當我在觀看這些事件時，‘我想起聖弗朗西斯的禱告：

Pray God give me the courage to change the things I can change, the fortitude to bear the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference.

願上帝賜給我勇氣去改變我能改變的事情，給我勇氣去承受那些我無法改變的事情，給我智慧去分辨其中的黑白。

I arrive in Hong Kong Thursday 24 October, staying for one month.

我在今年的10月24日星期四抵達香港，逗留一個月。

As ever
如常，祝願香港

H

列顕倫

PS Please feel free to convey these observations to anyone you chose ………….They are *not confidential*.

歡迎隨時將我這些意見傳達給你所選擇的任何人.此文是*不保密的*。

A GOOD READ from one of the greatest leader that lived, #SINGAPORE's founding man, #LeeKuanYew

THIS MUST BE SHARED AND THOROUGHLY READ BY EVERY FILIPINO... Its quite long but it will surely strengthen our minds but then at the end, I was like "SAYANG!!!"
It came from the SINGAPORE'S FOUNDING MAN ITSELF, former Prime Minister LEE KUAN YEW on how the Philippines should have become, IF ONLY...

I've just read it and, its point blank!
Its a good read
____________

(The following excerpt is taken from pages 299 – 305 from Lee Kuan Yew’s book “From Third World to First”, Chapter 18 “Building Ties with Thailand, the Philippines, and Brunei”)

*

The Philippines was a world apart from us, running a different style of politics and government under an American military umbrella. It was not until January 1974 that I visited President Marcos in Manila. When my Singapore Airlines plane flew into Philippine airspace, a small squadron of Philippine Air Force jet fighters escorted it to Manila Airport. There Marcos received me in great style – the Filipino way. I was put up at the guest wing of Malacañang Palace in lavishly furnished rooms, valuable objects of art bought in Europe strewn all over. Our hosts were gracious, extravagant in hospitality, flamboyant. Over a thousand miles of water separated us. There was no friction and little trade. We played golf, talked about the future of ASEAN, and promised to keep in touch.

His foreign minister, Carlos P. Romulo, was a small man of about five feet some 20 years my senior, with a ready wit and a self-deprecating manner about his size and other limitations. Romulo had a good sense of humor, an eloquent tongue, and a sharp pen, and was an excellent dinner companion because he was a wonderful raconteur, with a vast repertoire of anecdotes and witticisms. He did not hide his great admiration for the Americans. One of his favourite stories was about his return to the Philippines with General MacArthur. As MacArthur waded ashore at Leyte, the water reached his knees but came up to Romulo’s chest and he had to swim ashore. His good standing with ASEAN leaders and with Americans increased the prestige of the Marcos administration. Marcos had in Romulo a man of honor and integrity who helped give a gloss of respectability to his regime as it fell into disrepute in the 1980s.

In Bali in 1976, at the first ASEAN summit held after the fall of Saigon, I found Marcos keen to push for greater economic cooperation in ASEAN. But we could not go faster than the others. To set the pace, Marcos and I agreed to implement a bilateral Philippines-Singapore across-the-board 10 percent reduction of existing tariffs on all products and to promote intra-ASEAN trade. We also agreed to lay a Philippines-Singapore submarine cable. I was to discover that for him, the communiqué was the accomplishment itself; its implementation was secondary, an extra to be discussed at another conference.

We met every two to three years. He once took me on a tour of his library at Malacañang, its shelves filled with bound volumes of newspapers reporting his activities over the years since he first stood for elections. There were encyclopedia-size volumes on the history and culture of the Philippines with his name as the author. His campaign medals as an anti-Japanese guerrilla leader were displayed in glass cupboards. He was the undisputed boss of all Filipinos. Imelda, his wife, had a penchant for luxury and opulence. When they visited Singapore before the Bali summit they came in stye in two DC8’s, his and hers.

Marcos did not consider China a threat for the immediate future, unlike Japan. He did not rule out the possibility of an aggressive Japan, if circumstances changed. He had memories of the horrors the Imperial Army had inflicted on Manila. We had strongly divergent views on the Vietnamese invasion and occupation of Cambodia. While he, pro forma, condemned the Vietnamese occupation, he did not consider it a danger to the Philippines. There was the South China Sea separating them and the American navy guaranteed their security. As a result, Marcos was not active on the Cambodian question. Moreover, he was to become preoccupied with the deteriorating security in his country.

Marcos, ruling under martial law, had detained opposition leader Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino, reputed to be as charismatic and powerful a campaigner as he was. He freed Aquino and allowed him to go to the United States. As the economic situation in the Philippines deteriorated, Aquino announced his decision to return. Mrs. Marcos issued several veiled warnings. When the plane arrived at Manila Airport from Taipei in August 1983, he was shot as he descended from the aircraft. A whole posse of foreign correspondents with television camera crews accompanying him on the aircraft was not enough protection.

International outrage over the killing resulted in foreign banks stopping all loans to the Philippines, which owed over US$25 billion and could not pay the interest due. This brought Marcos to the crunch. He sent his minister for trade and industry, Bobby Ongpin, to ask me for a loan of US$300-500 million to meet the interest payments. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “We will never see that money back.” Moreover, I added, everyone knew that Marcos was seriously ill and under constant medication for a wasting disease. What was needed was a strong, healthy leader, not more loans.

Shortly afterward, in February 1984, Marcos met me in Brunei at the sultanate’s independence celebrations. He had undergone a dramatic physical change. Although less puffy than he had appeared on television, his complexion was dark as if he had been out in the sun. He was breathing hard as he spoke, his voice was soft, eyes bleary, and hair thinning. He looked most unhealthy. An ambulance with all the necessary equipment and a team of Filipino doctors were on standby outside his guest bungalow. Marcos spent much of the time giving me a most improbable story of how Aquino had been shot.

As soon as all our aides left, I went straight to the point, that no bank was going to lend him any money. They wanted to know who was going to succeed him if anything were to happen to him; all the bankers could see that he no longer looked healthy. Singapore banks had lent US$8 billion of the US$25 billion owing. The hard fact was they were not likely to get repayment for some 20 years. He countered that it would be only eight years. I said the bankers wanted to see a strong leader in the Philippines who could restore stability, and the Americans hoped the election in May would throw up someone who could be such a leader. I asked whom he would nominate for the election. He said Prime Minister Cesar Virata. I was blunt. Virata was a nonstarter, a first-class administrator but no political leader; further, his most politically astute colleague, defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile, was out of favour. Marcos was silent, then he admitted that succession was the nub of the problem. If he could find a successor, there would be a solution. As I left, he said, “You are a true friend.” I did not understand him. It was a strange meeting.

With medical care, Marcos dragged on. Cesar Virata met me in Singapore in January the following year. He was completely guileless, a political innocent. He said that Mrs. Imelda Marcos was likely to be nominated as the presidential candidate. I asked how that could be when there were other weighty candidates, including Juan Ponce Enrile and Blas Ople, the labor minister. Virata replied it had to do with “flow of money; she would have more money than other candidates to pay for the votes needed for nomination by the party and to win the election. He added that if she were the candidate, the opposition would put up Mrs. Cory Aquino and work up the people’s feelings. He said the economy was going down with no political stability.

The denouement came in February 1986 when Marcos held presidential elections which he claimed he won. Cory Aquino, the opposition candidate, disputed this and launched a civil disobedience campaign. Defense Minister Juan Enrile defected and admitted election fraud had taken place, and the head of the Philippine constabulary, Lieutenant General Fidel Ramos, joined him. A massive show of “people power” in the streets of Manila led to a spectacular overthrow of a dictatorship. The final indignity was on 25 February 1986, when Marcos and his wife fled in U.S. Air Force helicopters from Malacañang Palace to Clark Air Base and were flown to Hawaii. This Hollywood-style melodrama could only have happened in the Philippines.

Mrs. Aquino was sworn in as president amid jubilation. I had hopes that this honest, God-fearing woman would help regain confidence for the Philippines and get the country back on track. I visited her that June, three months after the event. She was a sincere, devout Catholic who wanted to do her best for her country by carrying out what she believed her husband would have done had he been alive, namely, restore democracy to the Philippines. Democracy would then solve their economic and social problems. At dinner, Mrs. Aquino seated the chairman of the constitutional commission, Chief Justice Cecilia Muñoz-Palma, next to me. I asked the learned lady what lessons her commission had learned from the experience of the last 40 years since independence in 1946 would guide her in drafting the constitution. She answered without hesitation, “We will not have any reservations or limitations on our democracy. We must make sure that no dictator can ever emerge to subvert the constitution.” Was there no incompatibility of the American-type separation of powers with the culture and habits of the Filipino people that had caused problems for the presidents before Marcos? Apparently none.

Endless attempted coups added to Mrs. Aquino’s problems. The army and the constabulary had been politicized. Before the ASEAN summit in December 1987, a coup was threatened. Without President Suharto’s firm support the summit would have been postponed and confidence in Aquino’s government undermined. The Philippine government agreed that the responsibility for security should be shared between them and the other ASEAN governments, in particular the Indonesian government. General Benny Moerdani, President Suharto’s trusted aide, took charge. He positioned an Indonesian warship in the middle of Manila Bay with helicopters and a commando team ready to rescue the ASEAN heads of government if there should be a coup attempt during the summit. I was included in their rescue plans. I wondered if such a rescue could work but decided to go along with the arrangements, hoping that the show of force would scare off the coup leaders. We were all confined to the Philippine Plaza Hotel by the seafront facing Manila Bay where we could see the Indonesian warship at anchor. The hotel was completely sealed off and guarded. The summit went off without any mishap. We all hoped that this show of united support for Mrs. Aquino’s government at a time when there were many attempts to destabilize it would calm the situation.

It made no difference. There were more coup attempts, discouraging investments badly needed to create jobs. This was a pity because they had so many able people, educated in the Philippines and the United States. Their workers were English-speaking, at least in Manila. There was no reason why the Philippines should not have been one of the more successful of the ASEAN countries. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the most developed, because America had been generous in rehabilitating the country after the war. Something was missing, a gel to hold society together. The people at the top, the elite mestizos, had the same detached attitude to the native peasants as the mestizos in their haciendas in Latin America had toward their peons. They were two different societies: Those at the top lived a life of extreme luxury and comfort while the peasants scraped a living, and in the Philippines it was a hard living. They had no land but worked on sugar and coconut plantations.They had many children because the church discouraged birth control. The result was increasing poverty.

It was obvious that the Philippines would never take off unless there was substantial aid from the United States. George Shultz, the secretary of state, was sympathetic and wanted to help but made clear to me that the United States would be better able to do something if ASEAN showed support by making its contribution. The United States was reluctant to go it alone and adopt the Philippines as its special problem. Shultz wanted ASEAN to play a more prominent role to make it easier for the president to get the necessary votes in Congress. I persuaded Shultz to get the aid project off the ground in 1988, before President Reagan’s second term of office ended. He did. There were two meetings for a Multilateral Assistance Initiative (Philippines Assistance Programme): The first in Tokyo in 1989 brought US$3.5 billion in pledges, and the second in Hong Kong in 1991, under the Bush administration, yielded US$14 billion in pledges. But instability in the Philippines did not abate. This made donors hesitant and delayed the implementation of projects.

Mrs. Aquino’s successor, Fidel Ramos, whom she had backed, was more practical and established greater stability. In November 1992, I visited him. In a speech to the 18th Philippine Business Conference, I said, “I do not believe democracy necessarily leads to development. I believe what a country needs to develop is discipline more than democracy.” In private, President Ramos said he agreed with me that British parliamentary-type constitutions worked better because the majority party in the legislature was also the government. Publicly, Ramos had to differ.

He knew well the difficulties of trying to govern with strict American-style separation of powers. The senate had already defeated Mrs. Aquino’s proposal to retain the American bases. The Philippines had a rambunctious press but it did not check corruption. Individual press reporters could be bought, as could many judges. Something had gone seriously wrong. Millions of Filipino men and women had to leave their country for jobs abroad beneath their level of education. Filipino professionals whom we recruited to work in Singapore are as good as our own. Indeed, their architects, artists, and musicians are more artistic and creative than ours. Hundreds of thousands of them have left for Hawaii and for the American mainland. It is a problem the solution to which has not been made easier by the workings of a Philippine version of the American constitution.

The difference lies in the culture of the Filipino people. It is a soft, forgiving culture. Only in the Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who pillaged his country for over 20 years, still be considered for a national burial. Insignificant amounts of the loot have been recovered, yet his wife and children were allowed to return and engage in politics. They supported the winning presidential and congressional candidates with their considerable resources and reappeared in the political and social limelight after the 1998 election that returned President Joseph Estrada. General Fabian Ver, Marcos’s commander-in-chief who had been in charge of security when Aquino was assassinated, had fled the Philippines together with Marcos in 1986. When he died in Bangkok, the Estrada government gave the general military honors at his burial. One Filipino newspaper, Today, wrote on 22 November 1998, “Ver, Marcos and the rest of the official family plunged the country into two decades of lies, torture, and plunder. Over the next decade, Marcos’s cronies and immediate family would tiptoe back into the country, one by one – always to the public’s revulsion and disgust, though they showed that there was nothing that hidden money and thick hides could not withstand.” Some Filipinos write and speak with passion. If they could get their elite to share their sentiments and act, what could they not have achieved?

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SAYANG! kindly share.