Opinion | Replacing Carrie Lam with another puppet would be pointless. Instead, Beijing needs to loosen the strings

The Hong Kong crisis is likely to end in tragedy unless Carrie Lam can muster the courage to tell her bosses in Beijing to stop eroding the city’s autonomy, allow genuine democratic elections, and end the insidious mainlandisation

Reading Time:3 minutes

A protester holds a placard depicting Chief Executive Carrie Lam during a demonstration in Hong Kong on June 16. Photo: Reuters

Published: 9:00am, 31 Oct 2019Updated: 9:19am, 31 Oct 2019

When a puppet show loses appeal, the smart thing is to reinvent the storyline. The dumbest thing is to keep the old plot with a few character changes. Audiences will not be duped.

Hong Kong is like a puppet show morphing into a Greek tragedy. The puppet strings stretch all the way to Beijing where furious puppet masters insist only a small minority of people brainwashed by the West are booing what is otherwise an excellent show.

Still, there is talk Beijing will soon replace Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, who triggered Hong Kong's worst political crisis. If that does happen, despite denials, it would be nothing more than a cosmetic reboot of the old puppet show which Hongkongers have already rejected with mass protest marches and petrol bombs.

It is a cruel fact that most Hongkongers consider Lam a puppet doing Beijing's bidding instead of accurately reflecting the people’s views to her bosses. Since the crisis erupted over her now-dead extradition bill, everything she has done proves rather than disproves that fact. She has not demonstrated in any way that she is on the side of the people or dares to stand up to her bosses.

Instead, she and her Beijing bosses have synced their script to claim external forces are stoking the violence, only a small group supports it, and to repeatedly demand an end to the violence. Demanding an end to violence without giving anything in return puts Hong Kong in a chicken-and-egg situation.

Which should come first – an end to violence or a political path to end it? Lam triggered the violence. Since it started five months ago, almost 3,000 protesters have been arrested, most of them students and young people. They have risked jail and sacrificed futures in the belief that only violent protests can protect their freedoms.