City Beat | Problems between Legco and Leung stretch to Beijing

When the chief executive and the chairman of the Legislative Council disagree over whether there's a problem between the executive and the legislature; when a glass is thrown at the chief executive during a Legco question-and-answer session; when the matter is reported to police; and when all pan-democrat lawmakers boycott a session … When all these things happen, it suggests there's more drama to come.

Those broken pieces of glass hurtling towards Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying illustrate well the tension between the two branches of Hong Kong's political structure.

Leung has insisted the problem is within Legco, where a few lawmakers are repeatedly using filibusters to block the government from functioning. But the problem could go beyond Legco.

At that chaotic Q&A session, Leung defiantly dismissed a call from James Tien Pei-chun, leader of the Liberal Party, for him to quit.

But the resignation of Hong Kong's chief executive is a decision not even Leung is able to take.

Leung's detractors never give up hope that what happened to Hong Kong's first chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, who resigned in 2005 after massive anti-government protests in 2003, could happen to Leung.

But recent gossip in political and media circles has it that Beijing learned a bitter lesson from Tung's resignation, and has since concluded it was a mistake to let him go. Since Tung quit, the public has come to believe they have the power to replace the chief executive by protesting, with the number of participants in the annual July 1 rally now seen by some as an indicator of whether the incumbent can hang on.