Hong Kong chief needs to restore citizens' confidence
Play
Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun Ying would be grateful for Beijing's endorsement, as mounting governance issues call into question his administrative skills. It is breathing space he should put to use by shuffling his executive pack to assuage the pe
He need not be unnerved by the chants of the universal suffrage lobby regarding the shape of the Legislative Council in 2020. He will listen, as any good chief executive would, and intercede with Beijing according to his judgement, without fear of a put-down.
Hong Kong people want their administrators to be like the city’s fabled tycoons – imaginative, bold, take-charge types who don’t lose their nerve.
He has to get a grip on management of a legislature riddled with factions because Beijing’s support may be short-lived.
The head of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Wang Guangya, could not possibly have held Leung accountable for the public discontent over corruption, a sense of drift in his administration and sporadic activism aimed indirectly at the central authorities for perceived meddling in Hong Kong affairs. Doing so would have been a self-indictment.
Wang’s reported remark that the central government did not have a “Plan B” for the city, taken to mean preparations for a replacement, might be read by most people as qualified support. Those who remember how the first chief executive, Tung Chee Hwa, was yanked out, after stepping into too many holes, understand why Beijing demands specific performance of its chosen men in China’s sensitive periphery.
Hong Kong in this milieu is no different from Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Liaoning provinces – they all have assigned roles in preserving China’s overall stability.
Wang was quoted as saying Beijing noted Leung had not had a smooth start, but hoped all sectors would stay united “and focus on improving the economy and people’s livelihoods”. Note that the people’s wellbeing is paramount, with no concessions made to institutional tinkering.
The message is clear: Hong Kong will have to work within the system designed, and not a system that some segments of the populace wish to have.
It would not allow for a party political system under which the chief executive’s mandate is founded on a definable base that allows him to build coalitions to get a legislative programme through.
The irony is that Leung can accomplish much of it with the apparatus he inherited, though it will be hard going. But that is what leadership is about.
Through it all, the city has carried on with business as usual. This has been Hong Kong’s winning quality through the days of British one-man rule and now, Beijing overlordship. It falls on Leung to preserve it.
