The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Hong Kong's Prime Minister: Who serves Carrie Lam?

2019-09-03T19:13:29.686Z


Carrie Lam has made an impressive career - and a serious mistake. Hong Kong's prime minister faces a dilemma today.



She is so late this morning that some wonder if she even comes. Her words, voiced a few days ago in a confidential conversation with entrepreneurs, lead her to say: "It is unforgivable to have caused so much chaos in Hong Kong," said Hong Kong Prime Minister Carrie Lam. "If I have a choice, the first thing to do is to resign after a deep apology."

Then she finally comes, measured pace, with a white blazer over the black costume, and appears more confident than the Hong Kong press has experienced in recent weeks. "I have never offered to resign," she says. It was "totally unacceptable" for anyone to record and communicate to the public her privately expressed remarks - the "journey of my heart," as she says. She herself has nothing to do with it. She wanted to continue "serving" Hong Kong.

Carrie Lam, 62, is the first woman to manage Hong Kong since the return of the former British Crown Colony to China in 1997. She has a career behind her that soon became apparent that one day she would make it to the top. As the fourth of five children raised in modest circumstances, she stands out from the beginning: student spokeswoman at a Catholic girls' school, an excellent student, and since the beginning of her professional life - finance, social, planning - in each office successful.

The longer in office, the more imperious

Many in Hong Kong admire her for her rise. They are counted among the so-called handbag party, a group of particularly efficient female civil servants whose career began among the British and leads far up under Chinese rule.

  • In 2010, as Minister of Construction, she won a controversial land reclamation project and earned herself the reputation of being a "tough fighter".
  • In 2014 she will hold talks with representatives of the umbrella protests for the then head of government CY Leung.
  • In 2017, she inherited the unpopular Leung - though not democratically elected, as demanded by the Umbrella Movement, but appointed by a Beijing-loyal body.

Nevertheless, many Hong Kong's hopes connect with Lams taking office: unlike her predecessor, she is not one of the rich business elite of her city, but discreetly keeping distance from Beijing's cadres, courtesy of which many Hong Kong politicians and businessmen court.

But the longer she is in office, the more imperious and awkward she appears. With scant words, she defends the judiciary's decision to dismiss several opposition politicians from their seats in parliament. Critics of a controversial new train station certifies an "elitist mentality". When her government refused to issue a new work visa to a Financial Times journalist in 2018, Lam said authorities were under no obligation to comment on individual cases.

Lam explains the extradition law for "dead"

In the early summer of 2019, it decides to bring in a highly controversial extradition law that would allow Hong Kong to transfer suspects to the Chinese judiciary. Even as hundreds of thousands protest against the law on June 9, she is holding fast to the law; she does not even think to withdraw it.

Her stubbornness irritates even some of her friends. "From the beginning, I did not understand what drove Carrie in this crisis," says someone who has closely monitored their rise for years. "Yes, she was always purposeful and ambitious, but she was smart too." One wonders where their prudence and political instinct remained.

Lam justifies her decision with a tragic crime: her motive was the letters from the parents of a young woman killed in Taiwan in 2018. The suspect, her friend, had fled to Hong Kong and could not be extradited to Taiwan. Since there are no corresponding agreements between Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, a "legal loophole" had to be closed.

"Carrie is not as stubborn as she is often portrayed"

Lawyers deny that the case could have been solved only by a new extradition law. After another mass demonstration on June 16th, Lam puts the law on hold and soon after, she declares it dead. But she has not officially withdrawn until today.

"Carrie is not as stubborn as she is often portrayed," says the politician Ronny Tong, who years ago moved from democratic to Beijing-faithful camp and now belongs to the close advisory group of the head of government. The meetings in the so-called executive council are "fierce", but Lam listens and accepts advice.

In the meantime, however, the crisis is so profound that it seems that it can no longer enforce some of these advices. On Friday, Reuters reported that Lam had attempted to meet at least two of the protesters' demands, including the official withdrawal of the extradition law, but failed because of Beijing's opposition. "You said no," the agency quoted an anonymous source. Beijing state media denied the message.

Two gentlemen serve

But on Monday night it was Reuters again, quoted from Lams conversation with Hong Kong entrepreneurs. Accordingly, the central government not only dictates to Carrie Lam how to solve the crisis. Beijing also seems to refuse her resignation, which she obviously considered.

As head of government, she has "unfortunately to serve two masters, the central government and the people of Hong Kong," Lam said in the conversation. Her political scope is therefore "very, very, very close". She does not want to be self-pitying, but like Hong Kong, her own life has been "turned upside down" in the past three months: "It's been extremely difficult for me to go out now. I was not in the street, not in the malls Do not go to the barber ... because there's a lot of black T-shirts and black masked people everywhere. "

At the press conference Carrie Lam plays down the content of the conversation. Not only did she not resign, she even "did not even think about discussing a resignation with the central government." She and her team wanted to solve Hong Kong's problems.

Lam parries questions in three languages, Cantonese, Mandarin and English, sometimes even smiling. But in the end, only one of the two versions can be right - that of a politician who really believes she can help her city. Or that of a head of government who has failed.

Video: Carrie Lam denies the intention to retire

Video

Getty Images

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2019-09-03

You may like

News/Politics 2024-01-29T18:39:22.190Z

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-28T06:04:53.137Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.