Tougher job ahead for Leung Chun-ying successor, pro-Beijing lawmaker James Tien predicts
Pro-Beijing lawmaker is again publicly critical of chief executive, saying he makes governing city an unsavoury task by giving up autonomy
The major voice of opposition within the pro-establishment camp has accused Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying of not standing up for the city's autonomy in front of the nation.
His failure to uphold the principle of "one country, two systems" - which is protected under the Basic Law - was seen last year in the Occupy Central protests, the later-stage strategies against which were not carried out entirely by local authorities, Liberal Party heavyweight James Tien Pei-chun claimed.
And by "surrendering" certain areas of autonomy that the city could not take back easily, Leung was making things more difficult for any successor to him, Tien told an online show hosted by a pan-democratic legislative colleague, Democratic Party chairwoman Emily Lau Wai-hing.
Tien yesterday fired his latest salvo at Leung, after a call in October for the chief executive to consider resigning amid Occupy sparking his expulsion from the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the nation's top advisory body.
He said that if Leung, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and former secretary for security Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee were to vie for the top job in 2017, he would back Lam.
But he deplored Leung's way of working. "A chief executive … must remember you are being the chief executive on behalf of Hong Kong," Tien said. "[However] the chief executive sometimes gives me an impression he has failed to represent us Hongkongers, Hong Kong in general."
