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My Take | Every crisis is a missed opportunity for Carrie Lam
- The Wuhan coronavirus epidemic was a chance for the chief executive to prove she could still take charge, yet she has been busy playing catch-up and sounding defensive
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Alex Loin Toronto
The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak may be another misfortune to befall Hong Kong after more than half a year of civil unrest. There is hopefully a good chance for the city to avoid another deadly Sars-like outbreak. For Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, though, there is a desperate need to prove she can still lead the city in a time of crisis.
Unfortunately, far from getting ahead of the potential threat from the mainland epidemic, she is at risk of squandering an opportunity to demonstrate her leadership and the competence of her government as a whole.
The highest-level emergency and the measures that health officials are putting in place are no doubt necessary. These include cancelling the city’s annual marathon, extending school holidays and mandating health declarations at all entry points into the city.
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But critics, not unreasonably, have asked why they weren’t introduced earlier – while she was hobnobbing with the world’s most powerful and richest people at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.
At a 90-minute press conference, she sounded defensive, and rebutted criticism that officials waited for her to return from Switzerland to take credit. I don’t know if they really had waited for her to come back. But what she should have done was to cut short her visit to Davos and rushed back to Hong Kong to take charge.
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