Anyone want lame, 10-year-old ideas about how to keep pushing rents up by cramming more and more people into Hong Kong? Here you go…
Back in the here-and-now, Chief Executive CY Leung is cancelling a trip to Beijing. And not just any trip to the nation’s capital, but an engagement at a Beijing-Hong Kong Economic Co-operation Symposium – an opportunity to rhapsodize at great length on the wonders of One Belt One Road. This is to CY what a free, day-long pizza/ice-cream/beer buffet would be to the rest of us.
What could possibly keep him away from Thursday’s Belt-and-Road panda-kowtow orgy? It seems he needs to ‘handle’ the judicial review against oath-twisting legislators Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching. According to an expert…
“Suppression of Youngspiration is linked to Leung Chun-ying’s valiant image. If the government loses in the judicial review, Leung would suffer, and he has to be in Hong Kong to make a response and decide the next step.”
So CY will be sitting at his desk clicking Refresh every few seconds for all his valiant image is worth, while an underling live-Tweets the proceedings from the court. Because he might suffer.
Precedent and observation (see here and here) apparently suggest that the court should reject CY’s attempt to interfere in the Legislative Council’s internal affairs. The Council’s President would therefore be free to give the Youngspiration duo their second chance at getting the oath right – though being Andrew Leung, a pro-Beijing shoe-shiner appointed by the Liaison Office, he might try to reverse his original ruling. Either way, this issue looks set to involve more court action for a while.
People’s Daily and other Party organs are ranting that ‘anti-China’ or ‘pro-independence’ lawmakers must not be allowed to take their seats. According to another expert on the radio this morning, Beijing wants the Youngspiration pair to be barred, but in a way that avoids by-elections. This is just the expert’s wild guess, but it is based on a sound reading of Beijing’s extreme phobia about splittists in LegCo.
This is not simply about oaths. If Sixtus and Ms Yau had delivered a flawless performance at the swearing-in ceremony, localists’ presence in the Council would still be unacceptable. Beijing would still eventually pursue them, perhaps for ‘not upholding the Basic Law’, and try to dislodge them in some sort of retroactive version of the pre-election barring of HK Indigenous’s Edward Leung and other candidates (also coming before the courts some time).
So this is about whether the Communist Party can overrule Hong Kong voters’ preferences in democratic elections. It is about whether the Communist Party can impose Mainland-style law-twisting procedures to penalize people for their opinions.
It is also about whether Hong Kong’s supporters of rule of law and freedom of speech can stick together as the United Front machine tries to isolate and crush a few who have ‘brought it on themselves’. Quite a lot of people’s valiant images are at stake.
That Standard story is packed with gems…
Forget politics, forget real estate, forget all your careers…forensic psychiatry is the thing if you really want to clean up.
All crimes are just personality disorders. Hitler had genocide disorder and Jeffrey Dahmer was just obsessive compulsive.
Come to the Rurik Jutting trial and see people really on the make. I’m hoping to spring Rafael Hui by Christmas. He had borderline acquisitive disorder. Or summink.
The keyphrase to use is “significantly impaired judgement”. All the way with SIJ. Got it?
Beijing’s attitude towards the localists may be more ambivalent than it seems. The case of Cheng Wing-kin, who was just convicted of bribing a couple of localists in an effort to undercut the pan-dems during the District Council elections, provided the first documented evidence of Beijing’s willingness to work with the localists. Maybe Beijing doesn’t really feel threatened at all by these idealistic young people.
Medical/Beauty/Cosmetic Surgery tourism hubbing would require a large pool of experienced doctors with perhaps some international credibility no? And the medical cartel is against bringing in any competition, right? Perhaps an influx of approved, CCP friendly, quality migrant mainland sawbones with plenty of organ harvesting experience?
The Chief Executive, CY Leung, said on Tuesday that he cannot rule out the possibility of asking Beijing to interpret the Basic Law over the taking of oaths of office by Youngspiration legislators-elect …
– RTHK today
The Chief Executive is implacable.
If the court is not amenable
And does not give the verdict desirable
He will seek a reinterpretation
To remove Youngspiration
From the house of legislation.
Law is law. People know what it meant
And if they see it bent
There will be more embitterment.
So much hope. At first the Handover
Had, it seemed, small impact.
But now Hong Kong must bend over
And be whacked.
George, your posts can always be relied on to be at once prurient, irrelevant and attention seeking.