My TakeWhy Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam lost her Teflon coating
- Hong Kong’s chief executive has in the past emerged from controversy after controversy largely unscathed
- But it is a different story when she stumbles on issues that directly affect the livelihoods of many locals
Teflon Carrie is no more. For much of last year, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor emerged from controversy after controversy largely unscathed. Then the new year started and she and her administration have had to back down not once, not twice but three times in a row, with possibly more policy U-turns to come. Her popularity in opinion polls has hit a nadir.
But it would be a mistake to attribute her latest problems solely to bad luck, arrogance or being out of touch with the public, though all three are contributing factors.
Nor are they the result of skilful attacks from the opposition. If anything, the pan-democrats and their allied critics have proved to be as clueless as Lam and her top lieutenants. Our political class, whether of the elite civil servants or of the traditional mainstream pan-democrats, are largely cut from the same cloth.
Last year’s controversies mostly irked the opposition and made good headlines in the international press. But they didn’t necessarily touch a nerve with the local public. The government’s expulsion of a foreign journalist with one of the world’s elite publications might have made international news, but most locals cared little about a newspaper like the Financial Times which they never read, nor about a club – of which he was an official representative – with the words foreign and correspondents in its name.
Angry lawmakers call on Lam to quit as approval rating hits new low
The whole furore started with the club inviting an advocate of Hong Kong independence – a cause most locals either reject or don’t support – to give a speech. The localist Andy Chan Ho-tin might have been a novelty to some expatriates, but his views were long familiar to many local people.