Opinion | Hong Kong officials are a long way from achieving herd immunity against bad decisions

The plans to make vaccination mandatory for foreign domestic helpers and the quarantining of residents of entire buildings, regardless of vaccination status, call into question the policymaking process

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Chief Executive Carrie Lam meets the media before an Executive Council meeting on May 4. Photo: Felix Wong

Published: 6:45am, 10 May 2021Updated: 6:45am, 10 May 2021

Hell hasn’t frozen over yet, but last week, pro-establishment lawmakers took turns counting the ways Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s administration has messed up, freely airing their grievances. Some named names, calling the underperformers unacceptable as they seek accountability and change. They even passed a motion calling for improvements in governance.

It’s unlikely that these lawmakers had a sudden eureka moment, because what they complained about isn’t news: that the government has taken the pro-establishment’s support – in terms of securing their votes in the legislature – for granted; that the government has failed to show them respect, by not consulting them and seeking their advice; that officials don’t understand public sentiment, and; that the government has failed to hold its members to account.

Hong Kong’s governance problem has been blamed on the dysfunctional executive-legislative relationship. But the absence of the opposition has only helped to show up the root of bad governance.

There are no longer political sideshows to distract attention from policies that aren’t up to par and a leadership that can’t take responsibility. The underlying problem is being out of touch with the masses, which would severely impair the work of any administration.

Lawmaker Priscilla Leung, seen here at the Legislative Council in April 2020, was one of those who named underperformers in the government, at a Legco meeting on May 6. Photo: Edmond So

The knee-jerk panic over foreign domestic helpers contracting and spreading a mutated strain of Covid-19 is a case in point. Mandatory testing is a sensible and necessary measure, but seeking to impose mandatory vaccinations on foreign domestic helpers, and only them, indicates a failure at the most fundamental level.

It is as if labour minister Law Chi-kwong had completely forgotten that, when the government was preparing for the Covid-19 vaccine roll-out at the end of 2020, Lam had said the programme would not be mandatory. “I cannot run a mandatory vaccination programme. I couldn’t even run it for the flu,” Lam had said then.

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