A year after the alleged incident was first broadcast on video, the Ken Tsang police brutality case is finally to come to trial. In order to ensure that the cops accused of beating the activist don’t feel lonely or picked on in anyway, the authorities have simultaneously charged Ken as well.
We can tell that Ken’s arrest and charging is bare-faced, contrived spin for the simple reason that it can’t be anything else. If you really need more evidence, the government has issued a whiny and defensive statement by Secretary of Justice Rimsky Yuen denying it.
If you want to be depressed about what this means for rule of law in Hong Kong, see here.
The media now have a nice neat balanced package, in which both sides could equally be victims, and both could be equally guilty of assault. If we brush aside the little fact that the 
cops are headed for a higher-level court on more serious charges, we see an elegant, symmetrical equivalence. Just a tad more spin, and the media can present the story as one in which the ‘black cops’ are no worse than Ken – or Ken is no better than the cops.
Barely able to contain itself, the Standard’s editorial dives right in. That stuff you’ve always heard about justice delayed equals justice denied? Total crap. Consider yourself corrected. And by saying the government is trying to divert attention away from the police, Ken (who – sniff – is barely even newsworthy) is actually trying to divert attention away from himself…
And he’s a coward. So there.
Recognizing that we really need a laugh at times like these, the South China Morning Post
has taken the bold and admirable step of introducing a humour column. This week: former Security Secretary Regina Ip (she of the 70s-style ‘tech’ economic planning proposals, the weeping in public and the all-too scarily obvious lust for the job) would make a Truly Fab Chief Executive! (The SCMP includes a heart-palpitating extra added bonus for admirers of coquettish women in uniform sporting dazzlingly garish Union Jack Red lipstick – the photo at the bottom of the column.)
I declare the weekend open with more from the Standard, who are just getting started…
You’re such a tease. Like any red-blooded male I instantly clicked on the woman in uniform only to find the video was unavailable. Fetishists have rights too.
Oh it is available on the desktop YouTube. But still no women in uniform.
I suppose the charge will be that Ken Tsang “used his body to assault the police officers feet”!
Hong Kong laughing stock of the world yet again!
The police were wrong but Ken Tsang provoked them; so what if China tortures political prisoners, the Americans have Guantanamo Bay; stop complaining about global warming, the West started it; they have corruption in America too; so what about internet censorship, in America they fire talk show hosts for saying racist things; who needs human rights, at least our streets aren’t full of drug addicts; and ma, he touched me first!
@Cassowary – if our streets aren’t full of drug addicts, then plenty of parks, public housing walkways and KTV bars are. Used needle anyone?
Be afraid, be very afraid. I know several people, some highly inteligent and /or succesfull, and including gwai los, who have said that of the various candidates for CE they would go for Regina essentially becasue she was a competent administrator and “would get things done”.
During the only conversation (several years ago) I have had with Audrey Eu I gave the only three reasons why I would leave HK. Two were to do with the use of English. The third was if Regina became Chief Executive. AE laughed and said Regina is an “an ambitious lady”.
Given so far I have failed to make money in HK but have to support my family, all reasonable job offers and ideas are invited as to allow departure.
That is one sexy lady!
@Incredulous: “Hong Kong laughing stock of the world yet again”. You seem to think people outside of 香港市 know and/or care about the trifling politics of this sideshow known as nothing more than a shopping mall?
@Boredcaster – See, that just proves we have a better class of drug addicts than they do!
The most hilarious thing in that Regina Ip piece is that he says Regina Ip is a better candidate than CY because CY is too divisive. Hahahahaha. As for “sincere”, that must mean “sincerely a vicious arrogant snob”.
Mini plebiscite please
The three candidates put forward for possible election are
CY
Regina
Lexus
Who do you vote for ?
From yesterday’s blog post: “people who cannot handle a university Magna Carta exhibit.”
According to the Christian Science Monitor, one of the four remaining copies of the Charter was due to be displayed at Renmin University, Beijing, this week, but was removed to the British Ambassador’s home where tickets were hard to come by. According to the British Foreign Office, this was due to “administrative and logistical practicalities.”
King John was neither sensible nor bold.
The barons said, “He has to be controlled.”
And in the river fields of Runnymede
The unhappy king reluctantly agreed.
“Alas!” he cried, or so the histories tell,
“Why didn’t the barons take my throne as well?”
The island kingdom prospered, grew, and gained
An empire where her monarchs duly reigned;
Then saw the empire fade and dissipate.
Now we look at Britain, not really Great,
Maybe still a power, but second-rate.
Meanwhile the Middle Kingdom, once so great,
Saw its pride and power dissipate
And in those years of failure and stagnation
Little bits of China, by one nation
Or another, ‘treaty ports’, were occupied
Including fields and peaks on either side
Of the Fragrant Harbour. But now once more
China is as mighty as before.
But is it mighty? The words of Runnymede
Through which, in time, all Englishmen were freed
And, far across the seas, Americans too,
Came to China to be placed on view.
A signal honour, surely, which reflected
The way that modern China is respected.
But no! The Charter cannot be displayed.
Can the super-power be afraid?
Another thanks to Knownot. However I think beyond V.IP and others is the fact that the PRC is deploying their HQ-6 battalion to HK. Surface to air missiles at Shek Kong. Couldn’t do it earlier for the roads and sites were not large enough. By 2017 this will be remedied. Now HK has a bloody target on it’s back. OK, just the dark side, but we are now all expendable to the Great XI’s foreign policy.
Meanwhile in blighty, five-star red flags are flying in front of the Horse Guards Parade in Whitehall today along with the Union Jack.
The Vagina-for-CEO article came from Yonden Latootoo, who recently was let go by ATV and who thanked Lord Vishnu on his bare knees that he got a salaried job at a media company, even if it was the Pro China Rag. Yonden will write ANYTHING to please his boss and keep his job.
Btw, Van de Kamp, how much longer are you going to vindicate that bog paper with your presence ?
Pan-democrats fail to pan out? “More than 60 candidates vying for a seat in next month’s district council election are unopposed after the two- week nomination period ended yesterday with 943 candidates.”
The anally retentive founds of most of the pan democratic parties must be so afraid of getting voted out, getting the boot, if they dilute their control over their (limited liability corporation) party that they can’t even grow their parties to run all the seats available. :-/
found should read “founders” KMB strikes again.
thank you knownot, for your thoughtful new poem…
@dimuendo – this is exactly why we need a “none of the above” option.
Remarkable that two entirely independent investigations into two different alleged offences happened to finish on exactly the same day. But it must be so – would Rimsky Yuen lie to us?