Will Beijing still support Carrie Lam after Hong Kong extradition bill debacle?
- City leader backs down to pause the bill following the pleas of her inner circle, just three days after vowing to press ahead with controversial reforms
- Source claims she met Chinese vice-premier before coming to decision, but Lam says the call to shelve legislation for now was hers alone
Three days after Hong Kong’s biggest protest march since the 1997 handover, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor remained unmoved.
“The lady is not for turning” was a line that came to the minds of many who know her, evoking the steely utterance of the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in the face of resistance.
Lam gave an interview on Wednesday morning, taped at 8.30am at Government House, where she insisted she was pressing ahead with her controversial extradition bill.
Such was her defiance, even though hundreds of thousands had marched against the highly unpopular bill on Sunday and tens of thousands more were about to surround the Legislative Council that very morning.
Police in riot gear were already being mobilised at daybreak and protesters who had gathered overnight at Tamar Park were steadily organising to block roads leading to Legco.
Yet Lam maintained then she had a clear conscience in pushing through the bill, which would allow the transfer of criminal suspects to jurisdictions the city has no extradition deal with, including mainland China. The public’s anger over the bill was focused on the lack of confidence in fair trials on the mainland and the threat of political persecution.