Righteous recruitment: Chief Executive Donald Tsang assures legislators the selection of undersecretaries and political assistants has been impartial.

Chief Executive Donald Tsang says the excessive dispute arising from the recent appointment of undersecretaries and political assistants should come to an end.

He today urged lawmakers to join the Government to dedicate all energies to other important livelihood issues such as inflation, fuel prices, avian flu, education reform and public health reform.

He said the expansion of the political appointment system is an essential infrastructure of Hong Kong's constitutional development and is an indispensable step towards universal suffrage.

The public has been widely consulted on the expansion proposal, and the details of the recruitment exercise have been scrutinised and approved by a recruitment committee, he added.

Impartial process

Although the mechanism is different from that of civil servants, impartiality and internal checks and balances were already included in the recruitment procedure.

Mr Tsang said all appointees have to take huge political risk and there is no completely objective standard to judge their value. Their value can only be judged by their performance, he said, adding the public should not make hasty judgement at this early stage. As the public will constantly monitor political officials' work, appointees with poor performance eventually will have to leave the Government.

Noting the appointees have shown their commitment to the city, Mr Tsang asked Hong Kong people to adopt an inclusive attitude when judging them.

On the nationality issue, Mr Tsang said the Government must stick to the Basic Law and it is inappropriate to impose additional restrictions.

He hoped the recent political dispute can end as the appointees' salaries and nationality and other details of the recruitment exercise have been made public.

Chief Secretary for Administration Henry Tang said the Chief Executive will be selected by universal suffrage nine years later and it is the right time to create more participation channels for potential political talent. Otherwise, the Chief Executive will find it difficult to form his team to run Hong Kong.