In defense of the new guidelines calling for the dismissal of public servants charged with taking part in “unlawful public activities targeting specific or general policies, and/or decisions of the government during their probation period”, Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip Tak-kuen rebutted on Sunday and Monday criticism that such a dismissal would violate the presumption of innocence.

With no solid arguments to bank on, critics have latched onto the common law principle of “presumption of innocence”. But to the fair-minded, those who peddle this argument in resisting the new guidelines issued recently by the Civil Service Bureau to various government department heads through an internal memo are merely playing tricks with the concept, or resorting to sophistry.   

It is common knowledge that the bar for public servants is much higher than “no criminal record”. The government has strict requirements on the conduct of civil servants, as the Code of Civil Service stipulates, of which “impartiality” and “political neutrality” are most relevant in this case.

The principle of impartiality requires that “civil servants shall carry out their duties and responsibilities in accordance with the policies and decisions of the Government of the day and in a way that is fair, just and equitable”. It is doubtful that anyone using normal logic could imagine how a public servant could fulfill this obligation when he or she is opposed to the government’s policies or decisions.

The principle of political neutrality, meanwhile, requires that “civil servants shall serve the Chief Executive and the Government of the day with total loyalty and to the best of their ability, no matter what their own political beliefs are”. It is not only nonsense but sophistry to argue that a civil servant can reconcile the intrinsic conflict between his or her “total loyalty” to the chief executive and opposing the CE and the government’s policies or decisions. 

Anyone who has any doubt about the principles of impartiality and political neutrality should have a good look at a court case last year in Australia, in which an Immigration Department officer was fired for criticizing the Australian government’s immigration policy on Twitter under a pseudonym. The dismissed civil servant appealed her case all the way up to the High Court in Australia, and the highest court eventually made a landmark ruling that the officer was lawfully fired, and there was no breach of the constitution.

If critics of the new guidelines really respect common law principles as they claimed, they should stop yapping about their nonsense arguments.