Carrie Lam must tackle Hong Kong’s political hot potatoes in her policy address, not play safe

While the Greater Bay Area and the pandemic are important issues, the government must reach out to the community, particularly young people, and not sweep the fallout from the extradition bill protests under the carpet

Mike Rowse

Published: 3:15pm, 1 Nov 2020

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Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s policy address has the potential to be a disaster or a triumph. The Hong Kong political climate is rather fragile so the customary damp squib will not be sufficient. The city badly needs a roaring success.

The temptation will be to opt for the safe ground. Emphasising the need to continue to control the pandemic is an obvious choice. Playing up the need to revive the economy and stressing the opportunities available in the Greater Bay Area are also worthy of mention.

But although these subjects are important, addressing them is not the most urgent need: the top priority must be to re-establish communication with the wider local community, and in particular our young people. The huge numbers who marched peacefully on two consecutive Sundays in June last year were a reflection of the estrangement between the government and the people.

There was not just concern over the details of the extradition bill, but also frustration that the people were not being listened to, that our opinion didn’t count for anything. How else to interpret the 20-day consultation period for an important piece of legislation than as contempt for ordinary citizens on the part of the political leadership?

As far as our young people are concerned, the estrangement goes even further back, at least to the Occupy saga of 2014. I recall seeing a photo in the first few days of that movement, when roads near the Hong Kong Club in Central were blocked by students sitting peacefully. The then financial secretary, John Tsang Chun-wah, was pictured walking past. I remember asking myself, “Why doesn’t he just sit down in the road and talk to them?”

By lending an ear to those desperate to be heard, could he have made a difference? The gesture might also have had an impact on the 2017 chief executive election. But he walked on by, and the chance was gone.

In her policy address, Lam must stress that the door to political reform is still open. Her credibility is in question – remember the stony-faced meeting with students when, as chief secretary, she “consulted” them on the 2014 package?

But while she is bound by the central government’s insistence that it preapprove candidates, she can and should offer compromises in terms of the membership of the selection/nominating committee, and improvements on how representative the legislature is.

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Five years after Occupy: comparing Hong Kong’s 2014 movement with the 2019 extradition bill protests

There is one other obvious way to reach out to the community – by establishing an independent statutory commission of inquiry into the events of last summer. Some 10,000 people – many students – have been arrested and are being brought before the courts. So those responsible for the worst of the violence and vandalism on the protesters’ side are being held to account.

But accountability ought to be a two-way street. Who is holding the administration and the police accountable for their errors of judgment and occasional incidents of excessive force?

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People can appreciate that, at a time of widespread disorder, the administration stood by the police. But after the introduction of social distancing measures to fight the pandemic and the national security law , the situation is now generally calm, at least on the surface.

Lam conducted an outreach session at Queen Elizabeth Stadium in September last year, with around 130 members of the public selected at random. These were not radicals but, one by one, they politely stood up and asked for an inquiry. Their plea fell on deaf ears, and no further consultation sessions were held. Inaction last year may have been understandable. It is inexcusable now.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam (second right) and some of her principal officials take questions from the public at a dialogue session at Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Wan Chai on September 26, 2019. Photo: Dickson Lee

Lam must also take up the cudgels on the need for our own national security legislation. The central government has imposed its version, but that does not relieve us of the constitutional obligation to enact our own. Right now, we are stuck in a legal twilight zone.

On the one hand, we have the mixture of common law plus archaic UK legislation, on the other, we have the new national security legislation which answers some questions but raises many others. We should have our own set of laws to fulfil the requirement of Article 23 of the Basic Law, but containing all the safeguards that the common law system requires.

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Finally, Hong Kong must establish a sensible code for dealing with extradition/rendition requests. We have some existing legislation and a number of agreements with individual countries, several now alas suspended.

Hong Kong should not allow itself to become a safe haven for criminals from other jurisdictions, so we must have an effective way of responding to legitimate requests, while incorporating necessary safeguards about justice at the other end.

One reason several countries have suspended their agreements is the fear that someone could be passed from Hong Kong to the mainland. We must somehow ensure that people extradited to Hong Kong for trial cannot be passed on to other jurisdictions without the consent of the extraditing party. Securing Beijing’s agreement will not be easy, but failure to try just leaves us in another twilight zone.

This is an ambitious agenda. But it addresses many key issues that have to be tackled and treats Hongkongers as adults. They are hungry for real government, and know that feel-good bromides only create the illusion of problem-solving.

Mike Rowse is the CEO of Treloar Enterprises

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Policy address must tackle the city’s many difficult issues

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