Political conflicts have left our real problems on the back burner
Hong Kong’s outgoing leader may have succeeded in quelling dissent on one level, yet the issues that matter most – social and economic – have not been dealt with
When Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying leaves office next week, he will leave behind a highly contentious legacy that will be the subject of debate for years to come. But while his enemies and critics will never admit it, there is no doubt that he has scored two major victories: against the Occupy movement and localist-inspired separatism. Ultimately, they count the most in the eye of the central government.
The outcomes were also predictable: political disillusionment for most, self-styled radicalisation by a few. Pan-democrats like to blame Leung for creating radical localism. That’s their backhanded acknowledgement of his success against the Occupy protests. Having exhausted the sloganeering on universal suffrage when pan-democratic lawmakers voted down the last electoral reform package in 2014, the worst of the city’s political malcontents switched to the notion of sovereignty, hence their ever changing, usually incoherent, sometimes contradictory demands for independence, full autonomy and/or city-state status over different time frames, up to 2047 and thereafter. The problem is that the localist radicals can’t even agree among themselves when and in what form Hong Kong’s separation from the rest of China will take, let alone convincing others that it’s a viable political programme.
