Carrie Lam’s welfare cuts should have taught pro-establishment legislators a lesson: no more rubber stamping

Only a little more than six months ago, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor gave herself a big hearty pat on the back for a job well done. In her self-assessment of the city’s governance in her first year in office, she said on July 1 that she was satisfied with, among other things, the improved relationship with the legislature.

By the look of things, any perceived improvement seems to have gone down the drain, along with her approval ratings, which, according to a recent public opinion survey, is linked to her sheltering the political freeloader on her team. However, we can’t blame everything on Justice Secretary Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah, since Lam did her share to poison the relationship.

It’s hard to imagine why Lam would expect that increasing the minimum age from 60 to 65 for elderly Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) payments would go without incident. But, by the look of things, Lam wasn’t feigning “shock” over the cross-political-spectrum opposition to the government’s plans to take from the elderly poor.

Lam recently claimed she had given her secretary for justice some public relations pointers on public perception, but did she forget to practice what she preached? Surely, there are no political gains to be had from being seen as insisting on taking from the most helpless and vulnerable in society. And her seemingly endless supply of insensitive comments – like how she, too, is “old” but still works 10 hours a day – certainly doesn’t help. It’s simply political suicide for any directly elected lawmaker to not raise hell over it.

Why didn’t the chief executive call for a meeting with pro-establishment lawmakers before the vote on a non-binding motion for her administration to shelve the age threshold increase? In a dramatic display in the Legislative Council, bitter political rivals crossed the aisle and temporarily buried their many hatchets to join forces in opposition. Lam may have inadvertently facilitated the greatest political reconciliation in the chamber in recent years.