My Take | Postponing election is right decision, but not for Carrie Lam
- Assuming Beijing first floated the idea about delaying the chief executive election, it looks like some members of the Executive Council got the memo before city leader
As hundreds of patients have had to sleep in tents to wait for admission to public hospitals, it’s clear the city is struggling to contain the fifth wave of Covid-19, triggered by the Omicron variant.
The latest decision, announced by city leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, to postpone the much-anticipated chief executive election from March 27 to May 8, is therefore justified.
It came just two days after President Xi Jinping told local officials that the fight against the raging coronavirus outbreak must be their “overriding priority”.
It’s also reminiscent of an earlier decision to delay the Legislative Council election in 2020 to last December.
Even so, the manner of public discussions before the latest announcement makes you wonder if Lam still has proper access to the central government, which was likely to have been the first to raise the issue.
It raises the question whether she was even the first to be told about it.
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Hong Kong Chief Executive election delayed until May as city considers universal Covid-19 testing