Hong Kong leader blames ‘people in important positions’ for long ignoring problems with political structure

Name: ‘We do not want unpatriotic people in our political system,’ says Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam
Uploaded: 2021-03-23T11:34:32.000Z
Duration: 2 min 40 s
Description: ‘We do not want unpatriotic people in our political system,’ says Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam

Carrie Lam says power to improve system lay not only with chief executive and government but also individuals, whom she does not identify

She calls on residents to seize opportunities laid out in China’s latest five-year plan and build upon city’s traditional strengths

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Chief Executive Carrie Lam speaks at an online economics forum on Tuesday. Photo: SCMP

Tony Cheung

Published: 7:34pm, 23 Mar 2021Updated: 8:01pm, 23 Mar 2021

Hong Kong’s leader has blamed “people in important positions” for long ignoring deficiencies in the city’s political system and allowing problems to fester and impede growth.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor also urged residents on Tuesday to seize opportunities offered by the latest national five-year plan under which Beijing pledged to support Hong Kong in boosting its traditional strengths in finance and develop the technology sector as a new driver of growth.

The central government had always been understanding and tolerant of Hong Kong in the hopes the city could identify problems with its politics and governance and take action, Lam argued.

“We did not fully implement ‘one country, two systems’,” she said, referring to the framework governing the relationship between Hong Kong and Beijing. “This is the city’s sickness and the root of our problems. In the past 20 years, not only the chief executives and the government had the ability to improve the system. Many people, in important positions, could also improve the system from their perspective. It was a pity that they did not see the problem or did not care about it.”

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‘We do not want unpatriotic people in our political system,’ says Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam

Lam served as chief secretary from 2012 to 2017, and as the city’s No 2 official was in charge of a failed campaign to push a Beijing-decreed political reform package through the Legislative Council in 2015. The changes would have allowed voters to decide the chief executive from a pool of two or three candidates picked by the Election Committee, an arrangement pro-democrats refused to endorse.