It took 30 years of President Hosni Mubarak’s rule to get 200,000 Egyptian civilians to march on the streets of Cairo and call for him to step down. For the late Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, it was four decades of communist dictatorship before half a million Romanians turned out to the city square to heckle their leader, demanding his resignation. So it must be quite an achievement for the new chief executive of Hong Kong to receive the same treatment before he has even had the chance to serve his people. Like Rosemary’s Baby, who shocked the nurses and cleaners in the gynecological ward during delivery, the July 1 swearing-in day looked as sinister as Polanski’s classic. Four hundred thousand Hongkongers angrily refused to give CY Leung a single day of governance to prove himself a nice guy, calling for his immediate resignation. A constitutional crisis would have been avoided, in theory, if Leung had announced his resignation as soon as he finished reciting the swearing-in text, so that Carrie Lam, his chief secretary, could have stepped forward on the same stage and recited the same lines immediately to save Chinese President Hu Jintao another trip in the future. But the emperor’s face would have looked grimmer than ever as the former surveyor enjoyed what would have perhaps been a Guinness-world-record, shortest-ever moment of political power. A few heads should roll soon after President Hu returns to his throne in Beijing to ponder who is responsible for making the emperor look so stupid. The first head is, needless to say, CY’s—the hero-turned-villain who has insulted the public intelligence of the Hong Kong people so blatantly by lying pointlessly, or perhaps compulsively, about the illegal glass canopy and other structures at his house. Misleading the emperor is punishable by death. The next in line for execution is the mentor—someone who, out of his own ill judgment, whispered his own eulogy in the form of recommending this highly dubious CY. It is rumored that Xi Jinping had been flanked and escorted by a single influential man from Hong Kong during his state visit to the United States in February, and then, significantly, the tide turned against Henry Tang when Xi went back to Beijing to cast his die. The third culprit is the police officer who hustled away and briefly detained the Apple Daily reporter who shouted a taboo June 4-related question at President Hu on the eve of the July 1 celebration. The reporter’s crime was being “too loud,” and thus “breaching public order.” It is common practice for journalists to shout a “Mr. President” question across a crowd in the garden outside the White House, only to be—well, not detained. “Being too noisy” is a common complaint usually leveled toward some Chinese people at a concert hall or a French restaurant in London. That police officer alone could be held responsible for about 10 percent of the demonstration’s strong turn-out. Chip Tsao is a best-selling author, columnist and a former producer for the BBC. His columns have also appeared in Apple Daily, Next Magazine and CUP Magazine, among others.
