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Naps, hairy crabs, inject drama into Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam’s 2½-hour policy address
- With no opposition and a captive audience, chief executive makes most of her time in Legislative Council
- Ministers repeatedly seen falling asleep, while one lawmaker was spotted ordering HK$9,600 worth of hairy crabs
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Naps and an order of crabs provided some entertainment for those in the Legislative Council who found Wednesday’s session to be tedious as Hong Kong’s leader delivered her nearly 2½-hour policy address.
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The chamber was filled with a surreal peace and orderliness, and for the first time in a long time, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor faced no protests, and no shouts of slogans, as she read out her about 24,000-word blueprint for the coming year to a half-empty chamber, partly because of the absence of opposition lawmakers.
Fifteen quit in protest at Beijing’s decision earlier this month that led to the disqualification of four of their colleagues, deemed to have violated their duty of allegiance or endangered national security.
Lam, who was forced to deliver her annual address through recorded video message because of anti-government protests in the chamber last year, chose to do so in person this time around.
But in a departure from previous years, Lam spent 135 minutes reading out her whole address, compared with the 51-minute speech last year, and 40-minute ones in 2017 and in 2018.
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