Carrie Lam’s surprise u-turn on bid for top job after CY Leung backs out
Announcement a U-turn from previous statements saying city’s chief secretary would retire after her last year in public service
A strong contender to become Hong Kong’s next leader re-emerged on the scene on Saturday with the city’s No 2 official, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, announcing she will “reconsider”running for the job.
After repeated talk of retiring, she said she had “no choice” because of the “drastic change” caused by Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying’s announcement a day earlier that he would not be seeking re-election in March.
Casting herself as a guarantor of the city’s stability and of Leung’s legacy, Lam made the U-turn less than 24 hours after her boss dropped his political bombshell, citing the need to be with his family for giving up on an almost guaranteed bid for a second term.
Her U-turn came as a source with knowledge of Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah’s election plan told the Post that the No 3 official had intended to resign and announce his bid this week after the Election Committee polls, but declined to say whether the finance chief would go ahead. The source was responding to reports that Tsang would resign this Tuesday.
Supporters see Lam as the most qualified politician to win the trust of both Beijing and the person on the street in Hong Kong, but opponents are concerned that the chief secretary has been too closely linked, by the nature of her job, with the unpopular chief executive throughout the past four years.