The extensive autopsy of Carrie Lam’s really-meaning-it-this-time apology yesterday is a fantasy-substitute for carving up the Chief Executive’s actual corpse. Discuss.
Best not watch it – and just skim the story. She had to simultaneously: align any core message with Beijing’s; kick her own useful-idiot support base in the teeth; and self-flagellate to the satisfaction of seven million citizens. Obviously, it can’t be done.
The main outcome is that the extradition bill has been retracted, but don’t ask her to say that. And if you want an intersectional deconstructionist contextualization of the word ‘riot’, that’s tough luck too.
She spared us the ‘takes out onion, starts to cry’ routine, thank Christ.
Lost in all the uproar, Executive Council member Ronny Tong has come up with an astounding suggestion.
Once a leading figure in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp, Ronny has mutated – for reasons we can only guess at but would prefer not to – into an avid government supporter. He loyally spouts the Beijing-ordered nonsense du jour, yet keeps his administration colleagues on their toes with his own unpredictable and challenging comments (today’s concerns the death penalty for helmet-wearers).
So – his Big Idea…
Hong Kong needs a Secretary for Planet Earth. This would be a government official at Bureau level. But, crucially, his full remuneration would comprise the median Hong Kong household income. He would take buses and trains, walk, wait in line at public hospitals, send his kids to ordinary schools, pay for his 400-square-foot flat in Shatin, and buy toilet paper all by himself. His identity would not be made public, so he could visit the population without being recognized.
Once a week, he would return to the mothership to report on what has seen.
For example… “They walk along the streets, then they go down these stairs and escalators into big underground halls, and after waiting a while, get into long metal tubes that glide through tunnels on wheels, and which take them to different parts of the city. And even when you arrive at your destination, you still have to walk for 10 or 20 minutes to go back up all these escalators and back to street level. It’s incredibly crowded and most people have to stand. You can’t tell the driver where you want to go!”
It’s worth a try.
Wait, is he suggesting that we need a propaganda department that reads the tea leaves of disgruntled citizenry and then doctors up the government response so that it reads well as (not in) the news headlines?
“He went on to suggest there was a need for a government department with officials who could read public opinion accurately”
Yup, so you could do that. Or you could have proper elections and then your policy would automatically be in line (or better aligned at least) with public opinion, no need for a department of bureaucrats.
@Ross
Your alternative would be cost-effective, wouldn’t require pouring concrete and would work … so no chance of that happening. But Ronnie’s idea … just think of all the face-recognising, mind-reading hardware (from Huawei) that we would need to buy from the CCP; the need for a shiny new building in which to put it (with residential blocks atop); and the hundreds of government epsilons required to sift through all that data!
We already know what happens when embarrassingly accurate polls are conducted. This government is the This Is Fine dog.
https://i.imgur.com/c4jt321.png
As ever — Ronny’s “big idea” is not his at all.
It’s just his way of noting that Alice Mak of the United Front’s FTU should perhaps have made Carrie Lam cry by telling her to go fuck her mother several months earlier when she started this fiasco, rather than waiting until Saturday’s closed door session, a week after Carrie Lam was in reality left with no choice but to dump the legislation and resign.
Ironically, even with her paid supporters telling her to GTFO, she has still not worked out that this is her only course and is currently busy in a futile weirdness that can only be described as a face-saving exercise for the recently beheaded. Her second chance was on the 10th of June. She blew it. Her last chance was dumping the bill explicitly this week (with a resignation at a 50:50 chance). She blew it.
Dead CE walking.
@Ronny YOOYE – it’s called the Theresa May syndrome. Lose, lose and lose again but just carry on as if nothing has changed. As for Ronny, when did a helmet become an offensive weapon? If you fear possible excessive violence by the police, is it illegal to protect yourself?
“it would be unfair to hold her accountable, Tong said.”
That’s the problem with the entire HK government.
There has been more law – Ordinances and Regulations – made in Hong Kong since 1997 than in the previous 156 years. Micro-management of society by the Civil Service has become the norm, rather than the exception. Compare for instance, two laws supposed to be about making life better. One is the pre-1997 Registered Trustees Incorporation Ordinance on charities and public welfare groups such as tong societies; the other is the post-1997 MPF laws-cluster. The former is a model of clarity and simplicity and hands the reins over to Joe Public – the incorporators. The latter is a confusion and mess under which the Civil Service has managed the transfer of billions to banks as incremental income.
I would like to nominate Andrew Leung for the Nobel Peace Prize. There seems to be some awareness in the pro-government part of Legco.
Folks, tomorrow by 5 PM (Thursday) Carrie must have withdrawn the Extradition Bill OR……..there’s going to be fireworks. The kids are mobilizing big time as we speak. Maybe you’d like to sell some stocks before 5 PM.
Interesting to see if Carrie pulls her request for funding the study for her East-Lantau-Concentration-Camp-for-Poor-People-Who-Don’t-Mind-Drowning-Through-Climate-Change…. (It is supposed to come up on Friday….)
Here’s hoping this Sunday, June 23, does not turn into Hong Kong’s “Bloody Sunday”
” … for reasons we can only guess at but would prefer not to … ”
I have just been made aware of the reasons behind Ronnie’s road to Damascus.
Yuk !
@Des Espoir
“Interesting to see if Carrie pulls her request for funding the study for her East-Lantau-Concentration-Camp-for-Poor-People-Who-Don’t-Mind-Drowning-Through-Climate-Change…. (It is supposed to come up on Friday….)”
Yup, that and the one about loving the anthem and really meaning it – both kicked down the road, likely beyond the end of Lam’s tenure.
Stephen (or anybody else)
Any tips on how l can also be made aware of the reasons behind Ronny’s damascene conversion?