Hong Kong’s former civil service secretary Joseph Wong has become one of the latest public figures to denounce the city’s beleaguered leader after she said Hong Kong has no separation of powers between its executive, legislative and judicial bodies.

Wong slammed Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam for “conceding to the central government” in a column published on Friday in local newspaper AM730.

“Hong Kong’s separation of powers does not undermine the relationship between the central government and the SAR government,” he said, adding that the separation was actually even more in line with the clauses listed in the Basic Law.

Wong’s comments were made following a controversy triggered on Monday by Secretary for Education Kevin Yeung, who defended the Education Bureau’s decision to remove references of the city’s separation of powers from secondary school textbooks to be used in the upcoming academic year.

Yeung said that Hong Kong’s constitutional system has never had a separation of powers, be it before or after 1997, when Britain handed the city back to China.

Yeung’s comments were criticized by pro-democracy lawmakers but were publicly backed by Lam, who added that the executive branch, authorized by the central government in Beijing, leads the entire Hong Kong government. Other pro-Beijing politicians have also said that the three powers must work in cooperation.

The Hong Kong Bar Association denounced Lam’s claims, saying that it deviated from the Basic Law and was inconsistent with other landmark cases on which Hong Kong’s judiciary depends.

Former Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Stephen Lam said in 2003 that he was hopeful about Hong Kong’s future because it had a system “built upon the separation of powers, transparency and in accordance with the law.”

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