Tung Chee-Hwa, Hong Kong’s first chief executive, had a tough term in office. And it wasn’t for lack of trying. When he took the job in 1997, the ex-shipping tycoon was full of lofty ideas. He tried to rein in property prices by building more public housing. He created Cyberport and proposed a West Kowloon revamp to make Hong Kong the region’s high-tech and cultural hub. One after another, however, his policies fell flat on their faces. Then came the SARS outbreak in 2003 and the collapse of the property market in the same year. His political downfall was so spectacular that paramount leader Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) made a point to dress him down in public. In 2005, Tung stepped down, citing an arthritic leg. Career bureaucrat Donald Tsang took over and began an administration based on a time-tested motto: do nothing, do no harm.
Seven years after Tung Chee-Hwa fell from grace, C.Y. Leung finds himself in eerily familiar territories. The only difference between the two beleaguered chief executives is that one of them has only been in office for a hundred days. Leung, a self-professed retail politician who ran on a popular platform to tackle the city’s growing income gap and runaway property prices, is coming undone. Nothing seems to be going his way. First, his cabinet reshuffle was derailed by filibusters at the Legco. Then, one of his ministers was caught cheating government housing allowances and had to resign just twelve days after he took office. Next came the national education debacle, which had snowballed from a loosely organized student protest into the biggest political crisis since the anti-subversion bill controversy in 2003. All of his other policies, including the northeast New Territories development plan, the old-age allowance scheme and even something as mundane as building a man-made beach in Tai Po, have been met with massive resistance. Leung seems to possess the “Sidam Touch,” the ability to ruin everything he comes into contact with.
The performance of a political leader is often measured by his accomplishments during the first hundred days in office, when he has the most political capital at his disposal. Judging from C.Y. Leung’s first hundred days, his administration is shaping up to be as disastrous as Tung Chee Hwa’s, if not more. Conscious of his own failures, Leung attempted to reboot his term with a campaign called “Hundred Days’ Reform” (百日维新), borrowing the name from the famous national movement in China during the late Qing dynasty. But when he realized how unlucky it is to name a campaign after an event in history that ended in failure and almost got the organizers beheaded, he decided not to tempt fate and drop it altogether. Though if Leung really wants to be superstitious about things, he should blame his miserable first hundred days on an inauspicious start. His reversal of fortune began shortly after he won the election, when a half-dozen illegal structures were discovered at his residence on the Peak. It wouldn’t have been such a big deal if Leung hadn’t attacked his opponent Henry Tang so mercilessly during the election debate for committing the very same crime. The city was so outraged by his hypocrisy that critics called for his impeachment even before he was sworn in. Very bad luck.
Politics superstitions aside, the illegal structure saga underscores C.Y. Leung’s biggest problem: credibility. All the lies and half-truths he told to cover up his building violations play into the perception that the man nicknamed “werewolf” is a compulsive liar and a ruthless opportunist. Indeed, trust has always been his Achilles’ heel. Throughout his political career, Leung has been dogged by rumors that he is a closet communist. During the chief executive election, his close ties with the Liaison Office (中聯辦), the de facto Chinese consulate in Hong Kong, made him look like a sell-out and raised suspicions that the two are in cahoots to “Sinofy” the city. So far, Leung has done little to bridge the trust gap. On the contrary, his credibility problem has been spreading like a cancer. It has infected his government and poisoned every policy initiative it puts forward.
Meanwhile, Beijing is keeping a close eye on C.Y. Leung’s every move. After all, the Politburo took a chance on him when he was still an underdog running against establishment candidate Henry Tang. When Tang’s election campaign began to implode in the weeks leading up to the voting day, Beijing took the Liaison Office's advice and backed Leung. With the 2017 deadline for universal suffrage in the city looming, the Politburo needed a strong man to finish what his predecessors have failed to do. They needed a leader with enough popular support to push through an ambitious political agenda in Hong Kong. Dubbed the “Four Great Tasks” (四大任務), the agenda includes: (1) passing the anti-subversion bill (also known as “Article 23”), (2) reorganizing RTHK (a government-funded radio station), (3) implementing the national education curriculum and (4) writing the rules for a Beijing-friendly version of universal suffrage. Task No.1 failed in 2003 after half a million angry citizens took to the streets demanding Article 23 be scrapped. Tasks No.2 got done during Donald Tsang’s term, after the government went through a sham recruitment exercise and replaced RTHK’s head with one of their own. That means by the time Tsang left office this July, three of the four Great Tasks remained outstanding. That’s where Leung is supposed to come in, as the Great Helmsman who will step up to the plate and check things off the list. At least that’s the way the Liaison Office sold the candidate to Beijing during the chief executive election. Three months into his term, however, Leung turns out to a big disappointment. With national education now dead in the water and his personal credibility out the window, there is little chance that anything will get done in the foreseeable future. Tough pills like Article 23 and election reform appear out of the question.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, C. Y. Leung made a catastrophic mistake two months ago that would reverberate far beyond the confines of our city. In August, a Hong Kong fishing boat carrying a half-dozen activists set out to the East China Sea. They dodged the Japan Coast Guard and landed on the disputed Diaoyu Islands. The incident set off a new wave of territorial disputes between China and Japan, and threatened to set Sino-Japanese relations back four decades. It is the last thing that Beijing needs when they are still cleaning up the Bo Xilai (薄熙来) snafu to make way for the all-important leadership change in November. It being a Hong Kong fishing boat, however, all fingers are pointing at Leung. It appears that the chief executive received conflicting signals from Beijing and followed the wrong marching order. He should never have allowed the fishing boat to leave Hong Kong waters and let home-grown activism get out of hand. Therein lie the perils of taking orders from up north, especially in the lead-up to the 18th National Congress (十八大) when there is so much confusion and factional in-fighting: you just don't know whom and what to believe.