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Letters | As coronavirus crisis leaves Hong Kong leaders wringing their hands, Joshua Wong steals the march with masks
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Why you can trust SCMP
“Our” government was able to speedily pass a law under the Emergency Regulations Ordinance to ban the wearing of face masks, even in peaceful public processions. But it cannot find the energy to propose, let alone pass, a law on mask price and supply to protect the poor’s access to affordable masks and reduce their risk of death – surely the ultimate emergency (“No emergency measures to stop Hong Kong’s price-gouging mask retailers”, February 10).
Yet a single citizen, Joshua Wong, can show more empathy, action and actual results than the whole apparatus of government. His group Demosisto has bought 100,000 masks from the US to be distributed among those in need.
Could there be a clearer demonstration of the moral, ethical, legal and practical vacuum at the heart of our government and governing system?
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This failure moves beyond incompetence and into criminal irresponsibility, in the social sense, though the social faculty seems inaccessible to Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and her advisers, who remain, to their public shame, by her side.
Paul Serfaty, Mid-Levels
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