Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam has refused to put the city’s top office under the supervision of anti-graft laws, breaching a promise she made during her election campaign three years ago.

In the remainder of her tenure, Lam will not change and extend the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance to cover the chief executive, she said during TV talk show “Now Forum.”

Lam said the chief executive has a constitutional role in the city’s political system and that Beijing would step in to handle any wrongdoings by a Hong Kong leader.

In her election campaign in 2017, Lam pledged to amend provisions governing public officers’ acceptance of advantages so as to hold the chief executive to account. Her promise came in the wake of the corruption trial of former Chief Executive Donald Tsang, in which some offences under the existing ordinance did not apply to the city’s leader.

Early last year, the South China Morning Post reported that central government officials in charge of Hong Kong affairs had opposed Lam’s proposals to amend the city’s anti-bribery laws. Beijing officials found it unacceptable to enact local Hong Kong legislation to scrutinize the chief executive’s behavior, according to the report.

A former anti-graft officer and pro-democracy legislator criticized the chief executive for betraying her own words. “All she knows is to follow the political decisions made by the mainland. She is a puppet,” said Democratic Party legislator Lam Cheuk-ting.

It is unreasonable to allow the chief executive to be the sole exemption from anti-bribery laws that cover all other government ministers and civil servants, Lam Cheuk-ting said, adding that the chief executive’s latest decision would leave open a serious legal loophole.

Meanwhile, about 64% of Hongkongers responding to a survey conducted by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute were unsatisfied with the chief executive’s latest policy address last week. They gave her blueprint an overall score of 27.2 out of 100, a record low in Hong Kong’s history.

During another televised talk show, “On the Record,” Carrie Lam said Hong Kong’s political problems — such as the 2012 anti-national education campaign, the 2014 Occupy protests and the 2019 anti-extraditional bill protests — stemmed from the failure to understand the “one country, two systems” principle and the city’s relations with Beijing.

When asked whether she had been constructive or destructive to Hong Kong, Carrie Lam said: “If I have been destroying a place that I deeply love every day as the chief executive, I would leave office.”

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