Harry Truman, on becoming US President, told the press: “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now.” Carrie Lam, pre-determined winner of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive make-believe election charade, should be feeling the same way.
Within a few months of taking office, Truman had to decide whether to use atomic weapons on Japan. Carrie says she will start with the simpler, less controversial issues. And that’s enough of that comparison.
The ritual of the CE pseudo-election was more absurd than ever. TV showed serious-looking government minions trundling ballot boxes around on carts. Carrie ‘won’ with 777 votes, a number (like most numbers in a syllable-poor, obscenity-rich language) that gives rise to unfortunate numerical puns in Cantonese. Hong Kong rules-based transparency intruded on the proceedings when officials insisted on broadcasting spoilt ballots – to prove there was no cheating – including one with a profanity scrawled upon it. Demonstrators rounded off the farce by pelting the local Chinese government office with one of Carrie’s best-known challenges, toilet rolls.
Straight after this inauspiciousness, we get a plethora of headlines and earnest columns about how Carrie’s main task is to unite this divided city.
She could improve the atmosphere by ending CY Leung’s United Front campaign to crush counter-revolutionaries. A South China Morning Post column recommends dropping the persecution of opposition lawmakers as a first step. It is obvious. Yet it is somehow unthinkable.
CY, under orders from Beijing’s commissars in the Liaison Office, tore Hong Kong apart through classic Leninist-style tactics of dividing the population into friends and enemies. This is how the Chinese Communist Party thinks and works. So the question is not whether Carrie can ‘re-unite’ Hong Kong, but whether she can convince Beijing to withdraw from local affairs, and go back to the earlier ‘One Country Two Systems’ principle of insulating the pluralistic city from Mainland one-party dictatorship.
In other words: Can Carrie convince the Communist Party to do some soul-searching, and decide that it has erred and should restore rather than continue to erode Hong Kong’s autonomy? It would be an impressive display of the steely determination for which she is renowned. She could further advise them that it might work with Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan, too.
Alternatively, maybe Beijing installed Carrie to be a warm-and-cuddly CY – continuing the Mainlandization of Hong Kong, but in a friendlier way that keeps us all happy. Idiotic Mainland academics give the SCMP a taste of this latter fantasy by opining that the answer lies in giving moderate (yesterday’s old has-been) pro-democrats some Gold Bauhinia Medals and Belt-and-Road job titles to play with…
Carrie looked more shocked than elated when the result was announced.
777, I can’t believe they could not even massage that. Beijing can’t help but shove one up it’s own backside, like all selfie stick waving tourist should do . http://theoatmeal.com/comics/selfie_public (before they leave home, preferably)
Unity What a disgusting word.
Porn-stache confirmed he would have been another sock-puppet with his call for unity. No wonder much of the old wing of the Democrats back him. They nearly all stand to gain if land prices to go up (being barristers, (ex-)financial journalist, multi-flat owners (or even NT landowners), and related parasites promoted by the British in their interest).
’Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny**. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.’
(**I’d add monopolist, but then again, that may be redundant)
@ Old Newcomer: Or resigned?
@Chinese Netizen: If only she would resign …
DD/MM/YY
26/03/17
A great day, as we see appear a
Heroine for the coming era.
No-one, I’m sure, will query a
Civil servant so superior.
No politician, but at any rate a
Very fine administrator.
Loyal and obedient,
Changing if expedient.
She used to say her one desire
Was – go to England and retire.
Something made her change her mind.
How lucky that she stayed behind!
No longer will she sit beside
CY Leung. She will decide
And now has three months’ long transition
To prepare for her position.
I thank the great and good Committee
For choosing her to rule our city.
Every patriot and boot-licker
Willingly agreed to pick her.
I cannot say how glad I am
To hail you, Mrs Carrie Lam!
CY has just torpedoed Carrie’s reign by arresting the Occupy lot. CY, the gift that keeps giving.
Well, the government’s gotten off to a good start by charging all the Umbrella Movement leaders with creating a public nuisance. So, a marginally cuddlier CY Leung it is, but only in the sense that a block of wood is cuddlier than a cactus. If they wanted actual cuddly, they would’ve gone with John Tsang, but being popular makes him automatically suspect.
D7777 was CE before, during and after Occupy and, until a month ago, micro-managed everything and everybody in sight. Now she claims that she had no knowledge of today’s wave of arrests by the HK PSB.
Yup: D7777 = CY 2.0
@knownot best ever! haha
Well looks like the CPC are going full retard — fix a CE even less popular than the one they had to get rid of with an even more detrimental vote number 777. Then just as everyone starts remembering why fighting for real universal suffrage is so important, they decide to call for the arrest of the only people who actually stood up for it — all the occupy students. I presume they’ve forgotten what happened when they last cracked down on protestors by tear gassing them.
Looks like they’re after bringing the moderates firmly into the anti-Beijing camp. Just the bottom feeders and toadies left, but there even Li Ka Shing and the Heung Yee Crooks are beginning to look more and more like they hate Beijing more than they like money…
When will HK Police be officially trained to goose step and wear brown shirts??