The search for the real Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s leader in waiting
Forty years ago, Carrie Lam was a student protester marching on Government House. Now she is the establishment favourite to be its next incumbent. Can the youthful idealism of her past help her inspire a new generation of Hongkongers?
The young woman with neat, shoulder-length hair and bookish glasses stands quietly alongside her fellow demonstrators.
She is near the front of dozens of students who have gathered in the early summer heat to march on Hong Kong’s Government House amid a brewing political storm that has brought weeks of protests and will one day come to be seen as a key event in the city’s political awakening.
Many of those around her appear jovial, looking around and smiling for the cameras with their hand-painted banners. But the young woman looks more serious, her face hard to read as she peers over the shoulders of those in the front row. Is her expression determination, or shyness? Is she driving forward or holding back?
The date is May 11, 1978, and the woman in this photograph is a 20-year-old Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor. She and her fellow Hong Kong University students are marching to give a petition to the governor in the then-British colony in support of the teachers and pupils at the Precious Blood Golden Jubilee Secondary School. Those pupils themselves are staging a weeks-long sit-in to demand the reinstatement of four expelled “leftist” pupils and the dismissal of their headmistress, who is accused of financial mishandling.
Nearly four decades since that landmark protest, Lam once again has Government House in her sights, but this time with a very different proposition in hand. Barring any 11th-hour scandal – or a last-minute change of heart by Beijing – the once shy young woman who has long since shed her cocoon to become a confident and forceful contender for the post of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive – will be declared the city’s leader by Sunday afternoon.