Just Saying | A biblical lesson for Hong Kong’s heartless leader, Carrie Lam, on the pitfalls of pride
- Yonden Lhatoo blames a heartless chief executive and incompetent legislature for the raging controversy over imposing a higher age threshold on the city’s elderly welfare recipients
Taking for granted that Hong Kong’s fearless leader, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, reads her trusty Bible every day, I recommend she flip over to Proverbs chapter 16, verse 18 and heed its timeless words of wisdom: “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
We’re all for the bold new style of leadership that she promised us when she was elected, to sideline poisonous politics, improve governance and restore social harmony, but her critics are not far off the mark in complaining that she’s living up to her old reputation of being arrogant and insensitive.
Take, for example, her mean-spirited move to raise the age threshold from 60 to 65 years for senior citizens claiming welfare payments, citing changed social circumstances, improved life expectancy and a global trend of extending the retirement age.
“I am over 60 years old but I still work for more than 10 hours every day,” she said.
Unfortunately, far from inspiring everyone with her claim to be leading by example in this respect, Lam succeeded only in leaving jaws agape over how privileged ivory-tower living can distort upper-class perceptions of reality and desensitise that finger on the public pulse officials are supposed to keep.
