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The Carrie Lam report exposed how the ‘Executive Dominant’ political system failed Hong Kong

By Larry Ngan | Sat 29th February 2020 - 10:11 am

Throughout 2019, Hong Kong was in midst of a political crisis. The non-consulted Extradition Bill triggered protests against the government, then entrenched by police brutality. At the dawn of 2020, the city was hit with the Coronavirus crisis, and the government created a crisis of its own by mismanaging its economic, health and homeland security policies.

Instead of concentrating on protecting the citizens, Chief Executive Carrie Lam seemingly put her effort in filing a complaint on the performance of her own government to the Beijing authorities. The report was leaked to Apple Daily (a Hong Kong-based Chinese language newspaper) and it caused an uproar in the mass media towards her character.

Apple Daily reported on 22/02/2020 that Carrie Lam laid the blame not only on opposition parties and “radical elements” of the protest movements, she fiercely attacked her Executive Council for being incompetent and pro-government parties for being unsupportive, while some pro-government legislators even criticised her with personal attacks. She also asked Beijing to allow those from Hong Kong who were stuck in Wuhan to return home, so ‘the Hong Kongers can feel Beijing actually cared about them’.

This report exposed a few weaknesses in Hong Kong’s political system: