CY goes full-frontal (eeeewwww)

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After several days of United Front-orchestrated mass-freaking-out over newly elected lawmakers’ botched oath-taking, Hong Kong Chief Executive CY Leung declares what the South China Morning Post calls ‘full-frontal war’.

The paper also uses the word ‘unprecedented’, by which it presumably means ‘desperate, bizarre, and borderline insane’. Desperate because the legal action to prevent democratically returned Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching from taking their seats in the Legislative Council came without warning late yesterday afternoon – the court sat late into the evening. Bizarre because CY launched the action in his own name (plus the Justice Secretary’s), making the exercise more personal than necessary, appropriate or, some would say, prudent. And insane because whatever happens, the government is going to lose, one way or another.

ad-689At least the initial cause is no mystery: step forward the Liaison Office (motto – ‘We never sit back and do nothing if we can interfere and make things worse’). Someone in the Communist Party hierarchy has determined that splittist sentiment must not and cannot take place in the Hong Kong Legislative Council. Seen from Beijing, this is logical. This is the PRC, and any institution, including LegCo, is ultimately an organ of the state and servant of the Party. That ‘separation of powers’ ‘freedom of expression’ stuff doesn’t come into it.

The Liaison Office and local puppets have calculated that the two Youngspiration members can be demonized. The mass-formation mouth-froth over the last few days stressed two angles. It highlighted the kids’ ‘childish antics’ at the swearing-in ceremony, thus inviting disapproval from respectable, hard-working, regular citizens. And it screeched of ‘hurting the feelings of Chinese people’, which rouses the patriotic nationalist faithful, and ticks the right boxes in Beijing. It’s classic, vindictive United Front isolate-the-enemy tactics. Then along comes this blundering, constitution-warping legal action, and it suddenly looks more like two innocent young idealists being persecuted by a psychopathic dictatorship again.

The Youngspiration pair (along with several others) will now get their second oath-taking opportunity today [or not], as previously ruled acceptable by the Legislative Council President Andrew Leung. (Just days after installing the hapless shoe-shiner as LegCo speaker, the Liaison Office has already chucked him under a bus as they continue with their hyperactive malevolence. He who lives by the shoe-shine, dies by the shoe-shine – though it’s not often it happens this quickly. No sympathy required, here.)

If the courts eventually reject the application to have the Youngspiration duo barred from LegCo, it will be big face-loss time for CY and his Liaison Office masters. If the judge – not having been dragged away from dinner this time – does kick the kids out, we have new elections. It is hard to say which would be more fun.

Meanwhile, Taiwan take note.

 

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17 Responses to CY goes full-frontal (eeeewwww)

  1. Chris Maden says:

    From the comments section of the Taipei Times article you linked to:

    Celina Wang · 國立臺灣大學 National Taiwan University (NTU)

    I truly like the support of HK, but we are already an independent country. We just need to get rid of the leftover from civil war, called the ROC.

    Shows which centuries Taiwan and the CCP are living in. Different ones.

  2. It’s a common affliction of local officials and presumably anyone posted here from abroad that you show you are awake and that you are doing something. This counters the natural assumption that you are asleep and have lost your balls. My mother remarked about Switzerland that ” Anyone with any power at all here uses it.” That was very acute of her. In Hong Kong, smothered in layers of bureaucracy the British largely invented and now complemented by a Neolithic dinosaur plague of Mainland apparatchiks, even the weather, littering or the price of rice will have someone fulminating. We have too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Anyone at ESF knows that too. It’s across the board.

  3. LRE says:

    I love the irony of a government who were in flagrant breech of the Basic Flaw (Art 26, 27, 39) when then vetoed candidates for the LegCo Election (An election which is itself essentially in violation of Art 68), using “contravention of the Basic Flaw” as a grounds to ban elected members from representing their electors as well. Add in the President of LegCo who himself contravenes the Basic Flaw (Art 68, 71).

    Finally there’s the small matter of Article 77 of the Basic Flaw:
    “Members of the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be immune from legal action in respect of their statements at meetings of the Council.”

    So… how do you prosecute legal action against LegCo members for what they say in their oaths at LegCo as being in violation of the Basic Flaw when they’re immune from legal action without violating the Basic Flaw?

  4. Joe Blow says:

    @Adams: “….not enough Indians….”.

    We got Chugani. That’s enough for me.

  5. PD says:

    Nice to see your win-win glee spurting out.

    I was afraid, for one horrific moment, that old George was going to trot out again his exhausted joke on having elections every morning.

    Predictions are dangerous: “The Youngspiration pair (along with several others) will now get their second oath-taking opportunity today”: perhaps, or perhaps not.

  6. Walter De Havilland says:

    Watching it unfold on TV. The pro-gov camp has taken a page out of the pro-dem playbook by walking out and then calling a quorum. The pro-dems clearly don’t like their own tactics being used against them. It’s open warfare now, with Long Hair throwing luncheon meat about. This is so entertaining.

  7. Meathamper says:

    Wonder if they would be so quick as to walk out if the legislators were paid by the hour.

  8. @LRE – that raises the legal question of whether they become members immediately upon being elected, or only upon taking their oath. In the latter case, they are not yet members if the oath is invalid. Whoever else wins here, some lawyers are going to have fatter bank accounts by the time this is all settled.

  9. PD

    Old jokes need a home like everything else. Fortunately they have Ken Dodd and me to rest in.

  10. Stephen says:

    As the late night interim injunction to bar the swearing in of two democratically elected prospective Legislators failed, the pro-establishment Legislators decided to walk out. Thus ensuring no quorum, hence, Ms. Yau and Sixtus Leung could not be sworn in. Anybody think that wasn’t planned by the Executive in collusion with pro-establishment Legislators ? Meantime President of the Legislature, Andrew “British” Leung (who has no democratic mandate to be a Legislator) looks such an unconvincing puppet you can already see the strings. To his credit his predecessor was of independent mind.

    So how does this play out ? The courts decide with the Government and if they don’t 689 refers it the NPC Standing Committee ? A new election between a couple of mouth frothing China flag waving patriots against the dynamic duo or, if they are barred, two replacement Youngspiration candidates ? And if the electorate again goes with the latter ? then a repeat performance ?

  11. Sofa King says:

    When I arrived in HK around 20th of October 1978 late at nite at the old Kai Tai it was also raining, and it kept raining for several more days. One thing that impressed me in those first warm, humid days were the police officers in the street in their olive green summer suits. And because of the rain they were wearing wrap-around green rain ponchos that reminded me of the capes of French flics. This morning I witnessed 3 PTU children walking their beat in Canal Road, 2 boys and 1 short, feisty girl, getting all wet, and I wondered what happened to the rain ponchos.

  12. Chinese Netizen says:

    @Joe Blow: *chuckle* & knuckle bump

    @Sofa King: New CCP Police are tough he-men (or she-men) and don’t need pussified colonial left over ponchos for weaklings.

  13. Monkey King says:

    Lol …

    Initially i thought the Youngspiration move was a blunder. Do the oath, get sworn in, without unnecessary stunts, and then leverage the platform and the media access. Learn the institutional elements of the political system, and then use it to magnify the scale and impact of any future ‘stunts’, activities, strategems.

    However, it appears that the United Front in Hong Kong is undergoing some kind of systemic collapse, and are incapable of co-ordinating ‘United’ action. Probably a prisoner’s dilemma type dynamic made much worse by the archaic, status quo-clinging, bureaucratic ideology in the CCP. Alternatively, there is open, outright rebellion by one faction of the CCP, and fucking up HKG for the ruling faction is part of the game plan. Or bit of both. Regardless, watching the rads vs. the apparatchiks is like watching a beginner chess player destroying a expert checkers player – it doesn’t matter how smart or skilful the checkers player is, he cannot win if he does not understand grasp the rules of the new game. He either loses, or pushes over the table mid-game and declares the game itself is invalid.

    Over the last 10 or 15 years, the only unifying moral imperative the pro-establishment camp has been able to really leverage within its media narrative is that they are the only game in town when it comes to getting things done. According to this narrative, the radicals (and pro-dems to a lesser extent) are unrealistic, don’t understand about China, and just want to waste time etc etc. The situation may not be perfect, but at least we wish to work to improve things instead of wasting time with inconsequential filibustering/banana throwing etc etc…

    And ….. its gone. The last non-nationalistic, non-cultural, pragmatic reason to support the pro-establishment camp, destroyed by their own hand, without any apparent political need to do so.

    I think Zhang Xiaoming, Lufsig, and Zhang Dejiang are shitting some heavy-duty bricks right around now. My smell is for Lufsig, an ICAC prosecution for the UGL payment is suddenly a serious possibility if he gets booted after this term. For Zhang Xiaoming and Zhang Dejiang, i’m guessing the potential outcomes for themselves, relatives, and guanxi network are much more serious.

    Tough for the bad news crew, but good news for Hong Kong, and good news for China too. At last some shift, some movement, as the official narrative descends into cognitive dissonance…

  14. Probably says:

    Does suspending 2 pan-dems give 689 an absolute majority against any legislative veto in LegCo?

    If so this is the same tactic employed by Hitler when the Nazis only held around 30-odd percent of the Reichstag. Stitch up an alleged card carrying commie Marius van der Lubbe for setting fire to the Reichstag. Then use this as an excuse (in cohorts with his conservative allies) to ban all communists from the Reichstag. And Hey presto, an inbuilt absolute majority to do what the hell he likes (and he did).

  15. Laguna Lurker says:

    Hemmers, I think it might be time to abandon your tiresomely repetitious use of the term “shoe-shiner”, which is altogether too polite. How about “boot-licker”, “brown-noser”, “arse-licker”, or “lickspittle”?

  16. Knownot says:

    CY, although I’m not a fan,
    I wish I could advise:
    Be more subtle if you can,
    Learn to compromise.

    However much they might offend
    With the garbled oath,
    You are wrong if you intend
    To destroy them both.

    “Occupy” was over, beat,
    Maybe you had won.
    They didn’t loiter in the street;
    Look at what they’ve done:

    The proper, legal, formal way
    Was chosen and respected.
    Whatever you think, whatever you say,
    They are now elected.

    Streets and demos, riots, fights,
    That was not their choice.
    Instead: discussion, votes, and rights.
    Give the kids a voice!

    So, if I can summarize,
    Perhaps I shall rephrase
    An insight – vulgar, sharp, and wise –
    Some words of LBJ’s:

    Better on the inside
    Pissing there
    Than on the ouside
    Pissing everywhere.

  17. Walter De Havilland says:

    Still got my poncho. I occasionally do Clint Deadwood impressions. But what the fruitcake does any of that have to do with the subject at hand? Just asking.

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