I refer to the comments on the city's state of affairs by Chen Zuoer , former deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office ("Colonial holdovers hurt city: ex-official", September 21).
In one bold stroke, he has removed any lingering fantasy we still have of democracy, and shown us the true face of a diehard communist. But unlike some angry legislators, I was not upset because, if you read it carefully, Chen's speech really sounds like a no-nonsense evaluation of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and the governing team's poor performance, rather than harsh words for the citizens of Hong Kong.
Chen is obviously very unhappy with many things that are happening in our city; put simply, the place is badly governed. What troubles me is that, given the situation, why has the central government repeatedly given unequivocal support for an incompetent governing team? If a business is being run poorly, we do not usually chew up the rank and file; we fire the management team. This is the common-sense approach that has made Hong Kong successful in the past.
A second point that greatly intrigues me is Mr Chen's comment that Hong Kong has failed to de-colonise in accordance with the law.
Since we are no longer a colony, what might still remain, one suspects, are probably insignificant vestiges of a dying mindset. How do you change people's mindset according to the law? Are there even laws that empower a government to do that in civilised societies?
Or, is Mr Chen thinking of something less abstract - like renaming street names with a colonial link; forbidding people calling themselves John or Mary; banning non-Chinese publications such as the South China Morning Post that were passed down from the colonial days; or getting rid of English judges, together with their symbolically colonial weird-looking wigs?