Unanswered questions and mixed messages: making sense of the race for Hong Kong’s top job

Hong Kong was taken aback when the two Tsangs – Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah and retiring Legislative Council president Jasper Tsang Yok-sing – declared their intention to run for the city’s top job.

The immediate question was why the duo would be the first to shed some light on who will throw their hat into the ring for chief executive, instead of incumbent Leung Chun-ying.

A few days later, we saw Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng yuet-ngor pay an unprecedented visit to the Department of Justice. “Lam thanked the DOJ for upholding the rule of law in Hong Kong and providing professional legal advice to the government,” a brief press release by the government said.

It raised many eyebrows as the department is currently at the centre of a political storm over whether a returning officer has the legal right to disqualify certain independence advocates from running for next month’s Legco elections. It also triggered another round of guessing as to why Lam would take the spotlight instead of Leung, the chief executive, who is supposed to be the direct boss of the justice department.

The real answer may not be known, but Lam at least sent out a message that as the chief secretary, she is the head of civil servants, and she stands by her colleagues firmly when they’re under pressure.

This could win her greater support from the government workforce as well as from Beijing.

And then we saw Leung declare in his latest media interview last week that he would welcome “competition” in next year’s chief executive election. So the “competition” has started – in terms of who will have the last laugh by winning Beijing’s blessing?