Opinion | Like Aung San Suu Kyi, Carrie Lam has let her one weakness overpower her better qualities

Tragedy can be defined as the destruction caused when a person’s better qualities and instincts are so overwhelmed by one weakness as to betray the ideas or people for which he/she had once stood. In which case, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi are currently such tragic figures. 

The grim-faced chief executive has almost certainly been following orders but that merely shows that she is more concerned with staying in power than listening to the people or healing such wounds as the “umbrella movement” in 2014 reflected.

To write off the mass of opposition to the extradition bill as based on “misunderstanding”, as her underling Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung Kin-chung has done, displays nothing less than contempt not merely for the hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers who took to the streets, but the lawyers, the chambers of commerce, and the diplomats concerned about Hong Kong’s separate status.

Equally insulting is the insinuation from government sources, let alone Beijing, that this is all part of a Western plot against China. However, foreigners have less to lose than others. They can move. Not so most Hong Kong people. There is real concern, already reflected in the property market, that mainland money is worried about the economic and social stability impact of the bill.

Now, Hong Kong’s future as an international business hub has been put further at risk by Lam’s vastly excessive use of force. Like the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the administration was determined to clear the streets, whatever the cost, as the huge phalanxes of heavily armoured police officers advanced following repeated barrages of tear gas and rubber bullets. For this bystander at Admiralty, a journalist who has felt tear gas before, it was deliberately brutal.