New | The frivolity of Donald Tsang’s corruption case does Hong Kong’s reputation no favour
I fault justice secretary Rimsky Yuen for passing on the buck of the ICAC’s findings, despite its frivolity and pettiness
The old Ottoman Empire had the most direct way of going about these things. When the old sultan died, his successor would seize all his brothers and half-brothers, slit their throats and dump their corpses outside the door of the palace.
If you want to send out the message “I’m boss around here now,” this certainly serves the purpose.
There are less assertive ways of doing it, of course. You don’t always have to kill your rivals, although the weaker your rule, the more it should help you keep the job. Mostly these days you just send them to jail, or threaten to do so if they don’t run away.
Thus in Thailand, former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra ran away from the current regime. In the Philippines, former president Joseph Estrada was jailed after being overthrown in a palace coup by his vice-president, Gloria Arroyo. In Taiwan, former president Chen Shui-bian was similarly jailed in one of his successor’s early moves.
Similarly in Malaysia, political high-flyer Anwar Ibrahim was barely even able to pose a challenge for the top job, before being flung in prison, and South Korea now wants to jail its president before she has finished her term. North Korea predictably does this with more dash. There they kill family members even before they make a bid to become boss or show any sign of wanting to.
The general term for such political regimes has long been coined. We call them banana republics on account of the historic fondness in the Caribbean for serial government overthrow.
I am not saying here that I have any evidence that the trial of Donald Tsang Yam-kuen was politically inspired. I certainly cannot see how he was a threat to any present or prospective political boss.
Nor do I dispute the verdict brought in by the jury. Its members listened to all the evidence.