tim's experiment

I am fed up with people saying and writing that the CE’s lack of popularity is not his fault; it is the result of a faulty system which would not work whoever was in charge of it. This is rubbish.

It is of course true that the system does not help. Hong Kong people want the CE to be someone they like, trust and admire. Beijing, which in practice is in a position to fix the election, wants someone which it likes and trusts. Unfortunately someone who is popular with Hong Kong people will for that reason be distrusted in Beijing, and similarly a CE who makes frequent visits to Beijing will not be trusted in Hong Kong, even if actually he gets his orders from the local Liaison Office. The trips are a treat.

Clearly this means that being the CE is a demanding job which requires considerable agility and in which universal acclaim is an unlikely fringe benefit. That does not mean it has to be the catastrophe which we now behold. It is not just that CY Leung is widely regarded as a slippery customer who lied his way into office, or that he has shamelessly used the public appointments system to pack his cabinet, and many other places, with obsequious mediocrities. Though both those things are true. It was sad last week to see the press coverage of the newly appointed President of Lingnan University. The lucky gentleman concerned is widely known as a friendly soul and a proficient academic administrator with an excellent record in his previous job as a Dean. That cut no ice with the political commentariat, who zeroed in as one man on the fact that the gentleman concerned had been a Leung supporter in the CE election. A spokesman for the appointing committee pointed out that they had not asked any of the candidates about their political affiliations. No doubt this is true. Unfortunately some people’s political affiliations are widely known. And jobs for the boys and girls has become a government theme song.

But it is also worse. Mr Leung has an uncanny knack for saying the wrong thing. On Sunday, for example, he announced that the plans of the Occupy Central movement were clearly illegal and would be treated as such. In our system it is not for the executive, or the Chief Executive, to decide what is legal and what is not. That is a matter for the courts. Maybe Mr Leung has been licking the nearest available jackboot for so long that he thinks all legal systems work the mainland way, in which the political leadership decides who should be jailed for ten years and the courts merely follow their instructions. In any case, Mr Leung’s own legal record hardly suggests a strong commitment to the rule of law. The unfortunate fact is that we are saddled with a CE who cannot urge people to obey the law without a good many of us getting an irresistible urge to giggle.

Actually we don’t know what form Occupy Central will take yet. Protests, even those including civil disobedience, can take a variety of forms, ranging from a short sit-down in an already pedestrianised Sunday street to an attempt to storm the Stock Exchange in trading hours. It is by no means certain that the best response to the methods eventually selected will be a violent one and it is no means certain that the end result of it all will be disorder, tear gas, pepper spray, street battles etc. Given the current levels of distrust, though, it is not a good idea for the government to make pessimistic predictions.  If Mr Leung predicts blood in the streets now there will be a suspicion, should it materialise, that this is because the forces of order were following bloodthirsty orders from him, and not because of over-enthusiasm on the part of the protesters. Mr Leung may feel that his reputation could get no worse. This is not the case. Tanks in Statue Square, anyone?