Anti-mask law effectiveness is in doubt. Now Hong Kong is on the brink and we will all go down with the ship
- Chief Executive Carrie Lam passed a law she then failed to implement properly making the situation worse than before
- What happens next is anyone’s guess but violence on the streets is the new normal for what used to be one of the safest cities in the world
What can be worse than introducing a new law but failing to implement it effectively and ending up making all sides unhappy and angry?
This is what is happening in Hong Kong, plagued by its unprecedented political turmoil. No one knows how the social unrest that has been raging for nearly four months will end, but what is certain is that when this city sinks, everyone and everything here will go down with it.
So was the government flexing some muscle by introducing the controversial anti-mask law when Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor on Friday announced a ban on the wearing of masks at all protests? By invoking the colonial-era Emergency Regulations Ordinance, the ban became immediately effective at midnight the same day.
But if the law was intended, as Lam hoped, to curb escalating street violence, it seemed to have quite the opposite effect, as evidenced by defiant, diehard mobs taking their illegal actions to new extremes.
Ironically, Lam’s “difficult decision”, as she described it, did not quite please her political allies from the pro-establishment camp either, as many doubted the effectiveness of the new anti-mask law.