Opinion | Leung revels in the dreary detail
Alice Wu realises, after sitting through Leung's numbingly dull policy address, exactly why our politicians are often at cross purposes
At some point around noon last Wednesday, it occurred to me, like a bolt of lightning, that I have no idea who Leung Chun-ying is. Obviously I know he holds the highest political seat in the city, but who is this man?
It happened some time during his reading of paragraphs 73 to 78 of his maiden policy address. I was dumbfounded: this man really is going to go through each and every plot of land, tell us about them, in hectares and the projected number of flats they will produce.
Of course, this self-made man "made himself" by using his knowledge of land and its potential. It explains how he can go through the details in that manner - droning on and on, like the drilling that goes on and on at my neighbour's ever-renovating flat.
But for him to think that his audience would sit through it is truly befuddling - or, perhaps, telling.
The man does not seem to be unaware that his way of conducting politics is unconventional. It is fair to say that he just doesn't care about being the type of politician that people expect to see today. He doesn't care that speaking in terms of hectares and numbers of flats is not going to excite the masses. He cares not for droopy eyelids. He ploughs on, and on, and on, seemingly unfazed by his low popularity figures.
Others in similar poll-stricken predicaments would have been throwing sweeteners at everyone, to buy back some popularity decimals.
But no. Instead, this man did the unthinkable. He didn't bother to dress up his maiden policy address - no niceties, let alone sound bites. He dazzled no one. He didn't even twinkle.