LettersWhat Hong Kong needs right now is leadership: Carrie Lam is not providing it

The chief executive and her team have repeatedly condemned the violence but offered no leadership and no solution

Our highly paid public servants need to offer something other than bureaucratic doublespeak and a fear of losing face

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A demonstrator’s hard hat spells out her message, as protesters disrupt train services at Admiralty MTR station during the morning rush hour on July 24. The protest was a response to the violence at Yuen Long MTR station late on July 21, when a mob of men in white T-shirts brutally attacked passengers, passers-by and those returning from an earlier demonstration in Central. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 7:30am, 25 Jul 2019Updated: 7:30am, 25 Jul 2019

I have waited patiently for the chief executive and her senior management team to show some leadership in these tumultuous times with hundreds of thousands of citizens demonstrating peacefully, and whose legitimate concerns were then hijacked by a violent minority of agitators.

Sadly, the chief executive, the secretary of justice, the secretary for security and the commissioner of police, along with all the legislators of this administration, were conspicuous by their absence until their appearance, too late in my view, at a press conference on July 22.

And what did we get when these senior government bureaucrats eventually appeared from their self-imposed heads-below-the-ramparts exile? Condemnation of violence; again.

Yes, I condemn the violence, as do many others. But what solutions and leadership were offered? None.

Well-known management guru Peter Drucker said: “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” It is debatable whether the administration under Mrs Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has been doing things right but, undoubtedly, she and her senior management team, and I include that cabal of privilege in the Executive Council, have distinctly failed to show any leadership by doing the right things.

The police, in particular, have been put in an invidious position by this lack of leadership. Let us have an independent commission of inquiry into all aspects of what has gone wrong. I really would like to see some leadership, as distinct from bureaucratic doublespeak and a fear of losing face, by our highly paid servants of the people.