Political arterial embolism in Carrie Lam’s Administration|Andy Ho
Despite her campaign slogan “We connect,” Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngo has turned out to be the most isolated among the Special Administrative Region’s four Chief Executives.
On September 8, The Atlantic reported that on the eventful night of July 21 last year, Lam and a small band of her trusted officials gathered at Government House to watch the angry protests in progress on television. They left their phones outside the room for security reasons.
They apparently focused on the conflicts in Sheung Wan and Sai Ying Pun where angry youngsters smeared the Chinese national emblem at the entrance of China’s Liaison Office. Later that night, most Hongkongers had shifted their attention to live feeds on Facebook by the Stand News and an assistant of legislator Lam Cheuk-ting.
Gangsters in white were seen assaulting people with wooden sticks and iron rods in the Yuen Long MTR station indiscriminately. The social media were flooded with snippets about the brutal attack and the police’s feeble response. The coterie of top officials were supposed to put their heads together to monitor and respond to unfolding events of significance. They had failed to do both.
According to the American publication, Lam and her confidantes were unaware of the developments. It was only by chance that they had later heard of the worst mob assault in the history of the SAR.
Mrs Betty Fung Ching Suk-yee, the head of the Policy Innovation and Co-ordination Office, excused herself to use the bathroom. She then noticed a flurry of messages in a WhatsApp group with her colleagues. She reportedly texted that the station was supposed to be closed and asked whether the video clips could be “fake news.”
Fung aside, Director of the Chief Executive’s Office Chan Kwok-ki, Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu, and the then Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Patrick Lip Tak-kuen were probably present. The government has ignored requests to comment on the report. The silence in itself is tantamount to a validation of the Atlantic story.
Before the government complexes at Tamar were completed in 2011, policy secretaries used to meet on weekday mornings with the Chief Executive at the Government House basement to discuss issues of the day. Attendants were required to deposit their phones in acrylic pigeon holes outside the conference room.
The ground floor of Government House was then used as offices for the Chief Executive, the director, permanent secretary and information coordinator of his office. The floor is also equipped with a ballroom, a dining hall and a drawing room. The first floor was off-limit as it is designated as the living quarters of the Chief Executive. Officials were free to carry their phones with them in the compound, except when they were at the morning prayers. The no-phone rules have obviously been tightened.
The team could have assembled either at the dining or drawing room. It might also be the Chief Executive’s living room on the first floor, if Lam felt comfortable enough with them. Presumably, they were there for three purposes. First, they might need to compile a timely assessment on the latest developments for the eyes of those in Zhongnanhai. Second, they would like to ready themselves for swift instructions to various arms of the administration when necessary. Third, they would need to clear an official statement in response to the widespread confrontations of the day.
It remains unknown whether they had managed task one. They had certainly not achieved the other two. There was no intervention from the top to contain the situation in Yuen Long. That horrible night was marked with slow and inadequate police response.
The first official statement on the July 21 protests was dispatched at 21:54. It contained three paragraphs condemning the radical protesters “who blatantly challenged the national sovereignty by maliciously besieging and storming the Central People’s Government Liaison Office building as well as defacing the national emblem.” There was no reference to the tension building up in Yuen Lung.
Two hours later, the government churned out another press release with passing reference to the Yuen Long bloodbath. It said: “The SAR Government strongly condemns any violence and will seriously take enforcement actions.” Its tone and manner suggested that the top echelon of the administration was unable to grasp the gravity of the attack’s traumatic impact on the collective consciousness of the community.
The Police Headquarters Command and Control Center did not bother to alert its political masters of the emerging fiasco. Probably, the commanding police officers have never been trained or reminded to do so even in grave situations. As a matter of fact, their subsequent responses till this day have been peppered with insensitivity.
It would have been easy for the police to sound the alarm for the Chief Executive. After all, her aide-de-camp is a superintendent. Officers of the G4 detail are assigned to be in close proximity with Lam at all time. It would have taken her bodyguards less than a minute to knock at the door and relay the shocking news to Lam. That had never happened.
Instead, the aides of Fung and possibly the other ministers present were jumping up and down trying to get connected with their respective bosses. Any antsy aide could have gone a step further by notifying their colleagues at Government House to get their superior out of the cocoon. That had not happened too.
There is a conspicuous lack of a workplace culture in which officials feel secure enough to scream for attention when the circumstances so require. The channel of communication was blocked at the most critical moment. This political arterial embolism explains why the Lam Administration has been so out of sync with the people they are meant to serve.
(Andy Ho is a public affairs consultant. A former political editor of the South China Morning Post, he served as Information Coordinator at the Chief Executive’s Office of the HKSAR Government from 2006 to 2012.)
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