My Take | Short-term pain best for Hong Kong leader in Teresa Cheng case
By sticking with the new justice minister, Carrie Lam is rather like me when it comes to stocks – I sell the good ones too soon and keep the bad ones too long
I am a terrible investor. I sell my good stocks too soon and keep the bad ones too long, hoping the latter will eventually rebound. Alas, many never do. So what started off as a perfectly good portfolio ends up a collection of duds.
I wonder whether Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor is in danger of doing something similar in politics with her disastrous hand-picked Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah.
Sorry, Carrie, Cheng’s stocks, over illegal structures at her two properties, aren’t bouncing back, but rather falling and falling as you stall.
It doesn’t look like Lam can ride out this storm, not without denting her own credibility and that of her government.
The chief executive has had a decent run and good poll ratings since taking the top job last July – until Cheng. Even the controversial joint checkpoint arrangement at the upcoming West Kowloon express rail terminus has so far failed to sink her.
The opposition wants blood, but they always do. However, you know the game is up when even card-carrying pro-government lawmakers are whispering that Cheng may have to go.
Asked if she should resign, loyalist legislator Paul Tse Wai-chun said: “I am inclined to feel that short-term pain is better than long-term suffering.” That’s exactly what my investment friends always tell me, but I rarely listen, thereby incurring even greater losses down the road.