Tung's proposed system will introduce a new layer of 14 top posts for political appointees, who can be fired more easily than the civil servants who now hold key Hong Kong government positions.
Critics said Tung was trying to gain more power and shake up Hong Kong's nonpolitical civil service -- a proud legacy of British colonial days -- but Tung dismissed the charge, saying he already has the power to decide top-level appointments.
"There's no need to strengthen the chief executive's power through the new system," Tung told lawmakers.
Tung hasn't named his new team, but top players including Chief Secretary for Administration Donald Tsang, Financial Secretary Antony Leung and Secretary for Justice Elsie Leung are expected to keep their jobs.
The revamp will leave political appointees running Hong Kong's 180,000-strong civil service, which Tung said needed a radical shake-up to cope with major challenges confronting the territory now struggling to bounce back from its second economic downturn since the handover.
Pro-democracy legislators called Tung's plan vague and said they weren't being given enough time to study it.
"They didn't give us any concrete details," said Margaret Ng, a lawmaker who represents Hong Kong's legal sector, who walked out of a briefing given to lawmakers before Tung publicly announced his plans. "It was meaningless."
Opposition lawmaker Emily Lau said Tung wanted his new plan approved in just weeks, so it can take effect along with the start of his second term on July 1.
The measure seems certain to pass, as the opposition can make noise but do little else under Hong Kong's legislative arrangement that critics say is unfairly tilted toward big business and pro-Beijing interests.
Tung said he wants government more accountable, but analysts had their doubts.
"Tung thinks he doesn't have command of the bureaucrats," said Anthony Cheung, political commentator at the City University of Hong Kong.
Lau Siu-kai, a political scientist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said Hong Kong's leadership has been locked in a stalemate in recent years because Tung had difficulties working with some senior civil servants.
"The system makes it more explicit that decision-making officials have to be loyal to the chief executive," Lau said.
Hand-picked by Beijing to take the helm of Hong Kong in 1997, Tung has been highly unpopular among ordinary citizens here.
The 64-year-old former shipping tycoon won re-election in a recent process that critics called a farce. Tung was to be chosen by an elite 800-member electoral committee but received so many nominations from its members that nobody else could get on the ballot.
Tung won by default, with no need for any votes to be cast.
Since it was returned to Chinese sovereignty, Hong Kong has been governed with a great deal of autonomy and is guaranteed civil liberties under an arrangement dubbed "one country, two systems," that allows for only limited democracy.
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