When I spoke out against the civil service pay rises, I always knew my comments were going to provoke heated debate and attract strong criticism. What I didn't expect, however, was to be accused of seeking political popularity by making them.
That is the accusation made by the Hong Kong Chinese Civil Servants' Association, which said my remarks were intended to gain 'political benefit' for myself, and for the Liberal Party, in this year's district council elections and the Legislative Council election next year.
I have tried hard to see the logic behind this allegation, but quite how opposing pay rises for some 160,000 Hong Kong people - nearly all of them registered voters - can be seen as a ploy to win more votes at the upcoming elections, is beyond me.
The same association accused me of attempting to create a rift between different sectors of society, and souring relations between the business sector and civil servants. My remarks, they said, were damaging to Hong Kong's social harmony. With all due respect to the association and its members, it is precisely that kind of rift and disharmony that I am seeking to avoid by opposing these unjustified pay rises.
All I have done is to highlight the enormous disparity between public and private salaries that the pay rises will create. If doing so creates a risk of tension and social disharmony, doesn't that tell us that there must be something fundamentally unfair in the pay awards in the first place?
In its statement criticising me, the association points out that its members have had eight years of pay freezes and pay cuts, and that their pay levels are now back to 1997 levels. That is quite true. But the association must remember that in the same period, many private-sector employees have suffered job losses, pay cuts and business failures, that its members have been largely shielded from.
Throughout that period, civil servants' benefits have been kept mostly intact, and they have continued to enjoy the kind of perks that most private-sector employees, and the self-employed, can only dream of.
By perks, I mean cut-price medical and dental treatment - including the ability to book into first-class wards in public hospitals for just HK$304 a day, while other Hongkongers must pay HK$3,900 a day for that privilege. I mean housing allowances, including non-accountable cash payments, that allow a grade two executive officer to claim up to HK$16,530 a month, for 120 months, towards their mortgage.
I also mean generous overseas and local education allowances that take the worry out of putting children through school and college, worries that sometimes overwhelm families who have to rely on private-sector pay or their own small businesses.
I don't oppose these perks. They are part of the excellent packages that help to ensure that we have, in Hong Kong, some of the world's finest civil servants. But my point is that these perks should not be conveniently forgotten as we debate the issue of whether we can afford to raise civil service pay by another 5 per cent.
When all these benefits are taken into account, civil servants are already 30 per cent better off than their counterparts in the private sector. Can we really afford to make that gulf even broader? If the pay rises go through, it will trigger a chain reaction of pay demands. Can our economy, and the small businesses that employ so many of our citizens, really afford to foot that bill?
I strongly believe that we cannot afford it, and should not be expected to pay it. I believe that most Hong Kong people see the pay rise as unjust and would prefer the annual HK$5.3 billion cost of the increases to be spent on more pressing causes, such as helping our poor, and improving education and health. And I believe that, in their heart of hearts, most civil servants share that view.
James Tien Pei-chun is chairman of the Liberal Party