My Take | Don’t sack Benny Tai; promote him instead
- The HKU academic has done enough damage by himself; targeting him now will just make him a cause celebre for the “yellow ribbon” crowds and their foreign cheerleaders
We live in a vindictive world. When retired superintendent Frankly Chu was jailed for three months for hitting a bystander during the Occupy protests, the anti-government crowds demanded he lose his multimillion-dollar pension despite a lifetime of public service.
Now that University of Hong Kong legal scholar Benny Tai Yiu-ting and lawmaker Shiu Ka-chun have been convicted and jailed for their roles in the 2014 protests, the conservative pro-government forces in and outside of the legislature are demanding both lose their jobs.
Enough is enough! These are testing times for our conscience and intellect. Let justice administered by an impartial court take its course. The rest of us, however much we disagree with and despise each other, should try not to contribute more to this terrible mess we have made ourselves.
I am no fan of Tai or Shiu. For a smart guy, Tai must be the most politically naive and misguided man I have met; and I blame him for helping to initiate a movement that has done more harm than good to Hong Kong and the rest of China.
But I don’t doubt his sincere commitment to his ideals. Should Tai lose his university job? Absolutely not – on practical, pedagogical and legal grounds.