Today’s government setbacks…

The international experts appointed to give Hong Kong’s Independent Police Complaints Council some sort of legitimacy have all quit. Unlike Justice Secretary Theresa Cheng, they will not – it seems – be bundled onto a plane to Beijing for reprogramming.

They wanted (it says here) to ‘start the process of getting the IPCC to “begin to meet the standards” that Hong Kong citizens would need of a police watchdog that met their rights and freedoms’. IPCC boss Anthony Neoh told a Shenzhen TV outlet that the experts were actually dumbasses who ‘did not understand the situation in Hong Kong’.

This isn’t the Hong Kong government’s only headache.

The Court of Appeal has (in a roundabout way, and not-very-enthusiastically) ruled that the mask-ban is unconstitutional for now.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam finds herself having to give sympathy and consolation prizes to the pro-Beijing candidates clearly rejected by voters in the District Council elections. The zombies lost because, out of blind obedience, they didn’t question her staggering ineptness. Most will probably get silly non-remunerated posts on sham advisory boards – but what better way for the administration to remind us of its contempt for public opinion?

On the subject of which, Carrie’s own PR people issue a statement that leads with her insistence that ‘the government will not deviate from the law to meet people’s expectations’. The people’s expectations are illegal?

And, presumably under pressure from Beijing, the authorities are acting tough on pro-democracy teachers, which is probably to say a significant majority of teachers.

The mid-week read is this on the apparent shift in the climate since the district elections, like the semi-de-escalation by the police. Includes Metaphor du Jour ‘Carrie Lam as radioactive bag of dog shit’. A nicer way of putting it would be that, as the government’s many problems suggest, Beijing is not doing well in this asymmetric struggle.

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7 Responses to Today’s government setbacks…

  1. PaperCuts says:

    “The government will only deviate from the law when it wants innocent people bashed mercilessly by thugs in train stations. Oh and err…the government reserves the right to make up the law as they go along. Don’t you profane peasantry underclass nitwits get it? The government is too big to fail. Duh.”

    – Carrie Lam (Junior Vice Galactic Overlord of Imperial Time Space)

  2. J90 says:

    Maybe this was all Frederick Fung’s masterplan when he ran as an independent in Kowloon West in November 2018, taking just enough pro-dem votes to hand the seat to pro-gov Rebecca Chan and prevent a pro-dem veto in LegCo…?

  3. Cassowary says:

    So the foreign experts (including the bloke who was investigated in Canada for covering up police brutality) do not want to sign their names to HKPF’s Farcical Whitewash. While all sorts of police apologists are willing to make excuses for America’s handling of Ferguson, or the French approach to the Yellow Vests the thin blue line will not stretch to Hong Kong. Radioactive dog shit indeed.

    I can already predict which of my “friends” will complain how hypocritical and unfair global opinion is towards human rights abuses in Hong Kong.

  4. Casira says:

    @J90: You mean to have a pro-bj majority in legco that is stupid enough to blow the whole system up and provoke its own desmise? I don’t think so, he was stupid enough to run again in TST West at the DC elections and got hammered.

  5. Reactor #4 says:

    I don’t understand why you would have a “Hong Kong Independent Police Complaints Council”? It’s mad.

    If you do have one, why would you allow a load of overseas fatty-whitey-pinkies from democratic jurisdictions sit on it? They are not going to give you the “back-up” that you want. It’s completely silly and not at all productive.

    If you do feel compelled to have one, you should engineer it to be a damp squid. For the right fee, I am sure that there are some retired senior police people in the ‘stans, the Balkans, western Africa or north-west South America who’d be more than willing to “help out”.

  6. Time keeps on slipping says:

    HK Protesters just won Time’s Person of the Year Readers’ Poll with a huge 30% (2018’s top 3 got 29%).

    Should start Carrie’s visit to the Pooh Cave this weekend with yet another minute or 5 of awkward, menacing silence.

    Strap in for whiny, petty, self-defeating government Press Release, and outrage from the Foreign Ministry.

  7. Reader says:

    Reactor4 proves his troll status (not merely ‘contrarian’) by again writing ‘damp squid’ for ‘damp squib’, showing at least one of:
    – he does not read others’ replies to his comments
    – he is just trying to wind up his more literate co-commenters.

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