Carrie Lam must use the window of calm to start repairing the damage she has done to Hong Kong

If Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and her bunker team think the strategy of waiting out the storm is the best and most effective option to begin the mending process in Hong Kong after the most traumatising summer in most of our lifetimes, then she is bafflingly mistaken.

If she believes the silence that has fallen across Hong Kong following the shocking campus crescendo of violence is a signal the worst has passed, then she is depressingly deluded.

If she believes the deafening message from the district council ballot boxes signals that the so-called silent majority has turned away from violence, then she may have some terrible shocks still in store. I sense the astonishing election results spell the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end.

There can be no question that both the incandescent campus violence and the district elections on November 24 were significant tipping points in the post-extradition bill crisis, but whether they point towards reconstruction, or mark a pause in the engagement, has yet to be seen. The government has in its hands the power to point us in either direction, and of one thing I am certain: continuing to sit on its hands is simply not an option.

Both the campus explosions at Chinese University and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the district elections, deliver important messages, but I am far from confident that these have been heard down in the depths of Lam’s bunker.

I am sure many in the protest movement seriously regret the strategy of fomenting a pyrotechnic campus confrontation, especially after the summer success of moving “like water”, toying with and taunting both the government and the hapless police force.