Hong Kong chief executives must learn to cultivate political allies, and avoid becoming liabilities
Alice Wu says with the office barred from party affiliation, the city’s leader must work doubly hard to win legislators’ support. The fact cooperation is lacking cannot be blamed on popularly elected lawmakers
“For the interests of Hongkongers,” former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa said at a luncheon organised by his think tank, Our Hong Kong Foundation, “both the SAR government and political parties should take an extra step in whatever they are doing … [to] work together to get back to the right track… [so] Hong Kong can resolve livelihood problems and overcome political difficulties.”
It’s hard to believe it finally dawned on Tung that he and other chief executives have not been able to carry out their constitutional duty to “executively lead”. He blames the system for governance failures. That’s not news, either. The politically straightjacketed office of the chief executive – one that disallows party affiliation – makes getting support difficult, and is all the more reason to include all political parties in policymaking.
Why Hong Kong’s leaders are shackled by the system
Most shocking perhaps is Tung’s assertion that “the problem is the chief executive does not lead any political parties, while the lawmakers are popularly elected”. He’s right in saying that as long as the chief executive is not popularly elected, while lawmakers are, we will run into problems. The reason is obvious: the mandate gap. But, again, we already knew that. Where Tung is wrong is in his view that popularly elected lawmakers, who “represent different interests groups and have thus constantly run into disputes with one another and the SAR government” are the problem. They aren’t; that is the essence and business of politics.