Carrie’d-out

Hong Kong ends the first full working week of 2017 suffering from an overdose of Carrie Lam. The Chief Secretary’s stage-managed resignation announcement points the way to a choreographed ‘election’ in March through which the Chinese government will make her Chief Executive of the city (assuming a last-minute defenestration does not prove necessary).

Few of us can be more fed up with this ritual than Financial Secretary John Tsang. He feels better qualified for the top job – being more popular, less associated with the evil Communist psychopath incumbent CY Leung, and relatively groovy and in touch with the young folks whose alienation from China should be a major worry to Beijing. Yet China’s authorities are making a big show of having forgotten that he exists.

At best, Beijing might view him as an emergency substitute in case something horrible happens to Carrie. The Communists will have noted that John is not convincingly servile towards them. His relatively positive public opinion poll ratings don’t help. The United Front in Hong Kong sweats and toils to maintain a coalition of dozens of shabby and grasping little ‘sectors’ because the obvious way of securing local support – being decent to everyone – just isn’t an option when the whole world is out to get you. Being popular among Hongkongers is a mark of untrustworthiness.

The Standard gently mocks John as he gets his New Year orange trees delivered and re-lives adolescent Bruce Lee fantasies. The rumour is that he will be fobbed off with some lame pseudo-job like Grand Vizier of the Belt and Road Investment Bank. Alternatively, he could go semi-rogue like ex-Chief Secretary Anson Chan, now a moderate and semi-detached member of the pro-democracy camp. He could end up becoming an ‘unlikely’ pin-up hero Localist icon – an idea that would unite both the Chinese Communists and the young radical nativists in horror.

I declare the weekend open with a plan to recover from the recent surfeit of Lam – an Inspection Tour of a Pearl River Delta backwater for several days, with no Planet Earth Internet connection. (It’s actually disturbingly close to Carrie’s holiday home, but I trust she will be busy here.)

 

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12 Responses to Carrie’d-out

  1. Chinese Netizen says:

    Wow. Didn’t see this coming…

  2. Stuart says:

    Carry-on Carrie.
    Such good material for a Veep style sitcom or a carry on style comedy.

  3. Gooddog says:

    Hmm – interesting. No comment at all on the fact that there will be 2/3 US aircraft carrier groups in the vicinity in the near future?

    Unfortunately for Xi, Donald and the US military industrial complex need an enemy and he and his grumpy mouth-frothy minions look like a good target. For once, he should call off the hounds and play dead. No good kicking this ant mound.

  4. Jason says:

    Completely off-topic: Just had a -cursory- look at today’s SCMP’s Editorial “Mario Soares-man of conviction”. Our beloved newspaper shows again its high standard of journalism:
    “By the time of the civil uprising that deposed Salazar’s successor Marcella Caetano in 1975″…..
    It wasn’t a ‘civil uprising’, but a military coup. Salazar’s successor was Marcelo, not Marcella, Caetano and the year was 1974.
    “Later he became the first democratically elected president in 60 years”…..
    Soares became president in 1986 and he was successor of Ramalho Eanes, who has been democratically elected, first in 1976 and then in1981.
    “He is credited with bringing the handover forward by years from the original target date”
    There was no original target date. The Portuguese, including Soares, tried to have a date, as late as possible. The Chinese insisted on a date before 2000, but accepted 20 Dec.1999 as a reward for the “good behaviour” of the Portuguese compared with the troublesome British.
    Do SCMP editorial writers have no access to wikipedia??

  5. WTF says:

    Jason:
    it’s all propaganda, why bother with facts.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oLvTLPULhU

  6. LRE says:

    @Jason
    Wikipedia’s banned in the mainland. ‘Nuff said.

  7. Walter De Havilland says:

    Carrie has now evoked God, who apparently told her to run for the position of CE. I’m assuming this God spoke Putonghua, otherwise we’ve got a full-blown religious nut job on our hands. Either-way, it does not bode well.

  8. Red Dragon says:

    Walter,

    God is clearly on the side of the pan-dem, localist, anti-government, anti-communist forces in their quest to put the wind up the dyed hair dinosaur brigade in far off Peking.

    Why else would He have provided such a fertile seed bed for their activities by guiding His left footing devotee, Sir Donald Duck, into the CE’s chair? Why else would He now be doing likewise by urging fellow knee-bender, Carrie on Camping, to take up the mantle?

    Clearly, He had no such influence on Tung up Bum or 689, but a quick word with His old mucker, Lucifer, must have done the trick. Heartening evidence, perhaps of some kind of rapprochement between the two big hitters behind the Veil.

  9. Joe Blow says:

    Xi Jinping asked for a candidate who would bring HK people together.

    Carrie = 689 2.0

    I refuse to believe that Xi will anoint Carrie. CCP internal politics aside, I am sure Xi can override opposition and install Pringles, in accordance with the majority of HK people.

    Having said this, I am happy to announce the demise of Vagina Ip as a viable political entity, as from this moment (and not a moment too soon).

  10. Joe Blow says:

    Today I saw a Rolls Royce -with a little puppet thingy on the bonnet- and a license plate that read “Beatles”.

    Louis Castro’s question of the day: Who is “Blingo” ?

  11. Red Dragon says:

    Far too oracular for me, Joe Blow.

  12. Joe Blow says:

    It’s that thing when there is an all black Beatles tribute band and Black Ringo (Blingo) is the drummer.

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