Director of Food and Environmental Hygiene Lau Lee-kwan has been promoted to Permanent Secretary for Food and Health. Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po, which are controlled by the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the HKSAR, pointed out that she was not enthusiastic about cleaning up the Lennon Walls, and her husband is the chief executive of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service (HKCSS) which was opened to “rioters” for them to rest during the protest movement, so Lau “does not live up to the standard of patriots running Hong Kong”. Since the criticism movement started, Carrie Lam Chen Yuet-ngor, Matthew Cheung Kin-chung and Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip Tak-kuen have been skulking, and evasive about fending off unfair comments on their subordinate, an administrative officer(AO) who is supposed to be politically impartial. In the end, to everyone’s surprise, it was Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee who clarified it for Lau Lee-kwan, saying: “As far as I know, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department did not tear down the Lennon Walls back then because a related lawsuit was on-going…the decision was endorsed by her direct supervisor.” She also said that it was not the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department that was responsible for removing slogans and banners that were in support of the National Security Law.

Ip Lau Suk-yee alleged during an interview that recently she has been told by some incumbent and retired AOs that they are extraordinarily concerned about the assaults on Lau Lee-kwan. She also said she has noticed some New People’s Party members have “jumped on the bandwagon to criticize her”, calling on everyone to “take it impersonally”. At last, she mentioned the retirement of veteran AO Philip Yung Wai-hung, saying that senior AOs are becoming scarce, and “we should hold dear the AOs that the government have spent years training up so that the effective operation of the government will not be affected”.

Ostensibly, the struggle against Lau Lee-kwan is about assaults made on her and her husband Chua Hoi Wai, but in fact, it is a standard practice of rule by political movements: everything blown out of proportion with only one purpose – let the SAR Secretary of Party Committee take over the power from the SAR government of appointing and promoting AOs. Lau Lee-kwan was just criticized to set an example. Next time when Nip Tak-kuen has to appoint another permanent secretary or below, he will obediently submit the name to the Liaison Office before proceeding, and announce it after approval. The reason why the AO bloc fail to safeguard their professionalism is they are ignorant of politics, thinking that if they simply do what the central authorities want them to do in giving the SAR an overhaul, they can stay safe. Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, Cheung Kin-chung, Edward Yau Tang-wah and Nip Tak-kuen are convinced that if they take the initiative to purge the opposition, put forward the requirement for civil servants to take an oath to pledge loyalty to the SAR and the Basic Law and even castrate the delegative democracy of the SAR, they will still be in power.

The prototype of the Cultural Revolution is actually a socialist education movement. On the surface it is about probing thoroughly into corrupt local officials. Take Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping as examples. They thought they could gain control over everything if they forestalled others to dispatch working teams to carry out the socialist education movement. What they did not know was that the ones Mao Zedong wanted to purge were Liu Shaoqi, the bureaucrats in the State Council and the high echelon personnel in the Party. Eventually, no sooner had the socialist education movement ended than the Cultural Revolution was started. The pan-democracy camp in Hong Kong who have been overhauled will not be able to stage a comeback, so the opposition party in the LegCo is gone; the civil society has been forced into a state of curfew in the name of fighting the coronavirus pandemic; waves of criticism movements have been hitting the city one after another. In fact, after the civil society, the media and the opposition are all purged, it will be the people at the helm that are going to be caught in the cross hairs next. “Patriots running Hong Kong” is a redline unbounded which can be used to disqualify lawmakers, teachers, journalists of RTHK, permanent secretaries, and all AOs to boot. Because “patriot” is a fluid concept, whether one is a patriot or quisling hinges on who is in power to make the judgment. “Revisionism” during the Cultural Revolution is a good example. Who was “revisionist”? Mao Zedong was the only person to decide it. When he said Liu Shaoqi was, so he was.

After the opposition purged, AOs are the next target, which is bound to take place according to the logic of political movements staged by the Chinese Communist Party. It was just out of Carrie Lam’s expectation that it would have started with the struggle against Lau Lee-kwan out of the blue. When the castration of the delegative democracy is still in the making, the next course has been dished up. This is the logic of seizing power in power struggle. Who is to blame?

(Lau Sai Leung, political commentator)

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