Hong Kong is filled with joy today as the city learns that veteran bureaucrat-turned-politician Regina Ip has decided to change her mind, and get in all our faces yet again. For 
a while last month, after her hopes of becoming next Chief Executive were so cruelly dashed, she was in a huff, swearing never to set foot in winner Carrie Lam’s Executive Council. We feared that she might step down from public life and gradually disappear from our lives.
Now the foot-stomping tantrum is over, and Regina is jumping up and down like an excited schoolgirl insisting that she might indeed accept an invitation from Carrie to join the ever-so important body.
This isn’t the first time she has taunted us this way. In mid-2003, after her tragic failure to introduce ‘Article 23’ national security legislation, she departed for the United States – leaving a broomhead-size void in our hearts. And then a few years later she returned, founding a political party, getting elected as a lawmaker, taking a seat in the aforementioned highly prestigious Council, writing English-language booklets for kids, going on TV cookery shows, and even starting up an Institute to promote China’s visionary ‘Belt and Road’ hub-zone initiative-concept.
Looking (hopefully many) decades into the future, I can envisage a sad day when Hong Kong is mourning her final departure, and she is laid to rest in the Giants of Public Service Memorial Garden – and hours later, a pair of immaculately manicured and fragrant hands reach out of the soil, and a muffled voice beneath expresses a decision to reconsider and continue to serve the community. We can only hope.
Meanwhile, we rejoice that Regina will be part of Carrie’s young, fresh, new-look line-up.
A letter in the South China Morning Post makes me wonder: is there a word for a statement whose own illogicality proves its point?
Mainland maths text: if a PLA tank can solve the problem of 50 troublemaking people promoting quarrels and disharmony an hour and there are 500 such troublemakers, how long will it take 5 tanks to restore social harmony?
Gads!! The image of Vagina The Zombie is simply sack shrinking!!!!!
@Boris: depends on which model tank and what sort of round it’s using for troublemaker neutralisation…
An Exco member gets a cool million a year. And it is not like she has anything else to do.
Given the comments yesterday of A Poor Man and Neighbourhood Watch, not to mention my “esteemed” self, if Mr Hemlock will permit, an additional question as to the now grey Sir Bowtie.
Given it is known as such a bastion of probity and lets nothing slightly sordid pass its doors, why is the Hong Kong club permitting Donald to dine therein while he remains a convicted criminal? Indeed, assuming (as I do ) he be a member why has his membership not been revoked or at least suspended? Sign of the times or consistency of action?
Perhaps Mr Hunsworth would care to explain, or indeed any other member, who is a reader hereof. No doubt any such will declare their interest.
PS Every criminal lawyer I have spoken to on the matter, including some who are quite good and/or of high profile, is of the view Donald was convicted bang to rights, and his sentence is quite reasonable.
In 2003 The CE hands Regina the political hot potato known as ‘Article 23’. To say she fecked up royally would be an understatement. She finally realized and in fairness quit and left. Alas she returned and refuses to go quietly, despite the CCP making it patently clear that she will not be trusted with the big jobs. Fast forward to 2014 and the CE hands Carrie the hot potato known as ‘Constitutional Reform’ which Carrie fecked up spectacularly. The CCP rewards Carrie by installing her as the new CE – a job Regina covets dearly. Article 23 remains untouched 14 years later, will political reform suffer the same fate ?
@Stephen – I think we can safely assume that the CCP wanted Article 23, but was not too unhappy at the failure to implement constitutional reform. The irony is that if Regina’s original Article 23 bill had not been so draconianly [is that a word?] over the top, it would have been passed way back then and Regina might have been CE by now. Instead her excessive zeal made the subject untouchable.
Is it possible that Sir Donald has gone grey in Stanley not through ‘illness’ but lack of access to tonsorial black boot polish?
Just re read original poor man post, and confirmed elsewhere, that Mr Tsang turned up at the HK golf club, not the esteemed organ in central. Apologies for misreading, although I await his turning up at the abbreviated version.
Mainland maths question 2: if a business man opens a factory employing 1,000 people to work 14 hours a day, 6 days a week at ¥1,000 per month to make 10,000,000 circuit boards per month. Over a single 5 year plan how many Hong Kong properties do the local party cadres need to buy in order to launder the businessman’s bribes?
Just think: if Regina Ip had been born British 6 years earlier — then perhaps she might have been so unelectable and deeply unpopular in the UK, they’d have made her the last governor of Hong Kong just to get rid of her. Oh the irony!