December 7, 2024
Hong Kong’s Carrie Lam – a lame duck who is as ‘dead’ as the bill she was promoting
Yes, Lam has been astonishingly arrogant and tone-deaf to the people she is supposed to serve. But now, as the titular leader of a city that loathes her, she is simply pitiful.
Yes, Lam has been astonishingly arrogant and tone-deaf to the people she is supposed to serve. But now, as the titular leader of a city that loathes her, she is simply pitiful.

With the streets roiling in angry protests and the Hong Kong government flummoxed into near silence and total inertia, this may seem an inopportune time to ask for a little sympathy and understanding for embattled Chief Executive Carrie Lam, but here goes.

Let’s face it, at this hapless point, our Chief Executive – cursed and reviled on a daily basis for the past two months of anti-extradition madness – is not just a lame duck with three long years to go in her altogether discredited administration; rather, like the bill she was so keen to shove down the throats of 7.4 million Hongkongers, she is “dead” in every sense of the word except the physical.

It is not just that she has lost any shred of influence and respect among the pro-democracy camp. Pro-Beijing lawmakers and their supporters have also turned on her for shelving the extradition bill after having enlisted their full-throated support for its passage.

Moreover, the Hong Kong Police Force now deeply resents her for placing them in the dangerous and exhausting middle of a protracted political battle.

Finally, and most damningly, the Hong Kong people have written her off.

[…]

See Also:

(1) A day after street chaos, Hong Kong protesters march in twin demonstrations

(2) Hong Kong braces for largest citywide strike in decades as 14,000 people from 20 sectors vow to join industrial action to protest against government

(3) What Hongkongers should know before going on strike on Monday

(4) Chaotic showdown in Wong Tai Sin as angry residents clash with Hong Kong riot police firing tear gas

(5) China’s ‘greatly improved’ legal system still depends on confessions extorted by torture

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