Vincent Yu
Carrie Lam leaving her press conference on Monday in Hong Kong.
The question now is who Beijing will replace it with. Hong Kong’s current head of government, Carrie Lam, said Monday that she will not seek a second term in May when a select committee appoints the city’s next leader. “I will complete my five-year term as Chief Executive on June 30 and officially end my 42-year career in government”she announced to the press.
After a career as a civil servant, Carrie Lam became the first woman to lead Hong Kong in 2017. She assured that the leaders in Beijing, whom she warned of her intentions in March 2021, had “understood and respected” his choice. She justified it with “family considerations”. “I have to put my family members first, and they feel it’s time for me to go home”she said.
No replacement identified
His successor should mechanically be pro-China. The position of Chief Executive does not result from a direct election, which was one of the main demands of the Democratic camp, now silenced. It is a committee of 1,500 people, all loyal to the Chinese regime, which appoints the leader. This electoral college represents 0.02% of a population of 7.4 million.
The predictions for who will be the next leader of the territory, the world’s third largest financial center, are uncertain. The new chief executive will be chosen on May 8, but for the time being, no realistic candidate has emerged.
The current number two in Hong Kong, John Lee, a former security service, has been presented by the local press as a likely candidate. Another potential suitor: Finance Minister Paul Chan. Carrie Lam also said that she had not yet received any resignation from a minister, a necessary step for any member of the government before entering the campaign. The next leader will take office on July 1, the 25th anniversary of the return of the former British colony to China.
The outgoing leader, for her part, thanked Beijing for its support and confidence, recalling that her mandate had been marked by “unprecedented pressure” with the 2019 protests and the Covid-19 pandemic. His record divides the city. Her supporters see her as an unyielding loyalist to Beijing who held her own during the 2019 protests and during the pandemic.
Conversely, many people, including many Western countries, see her as the one who oversaw Hong Kong’s collapse of political freedoms and its reputation as a stable regional business centre. After the huge and sometimes violent protests of 2019the Chinese central government has staged a massive crackdown in the city in order to imprint its authoritarian brand there.
Carrie Lam, 64, is the first Hong Kong leader to be sanctioned by the United States for his support for this repressionwhich led to imprisonment or exile of key pro-democracy activists.
His government also followed the Chinese model of “zero-Covid”, implementing some of the toughest anti-coronavirus measures in the world. If the closure of borders and draconian quarantine rules prevented any local epidemic for 18 months, the Omicron variant has led to a record mortality rate, with nearly 8,000 deaths since the beginning of the year.
Over the past two years, Hong Kongers have left the territory at a rate not seen since the 1990s. Thousands of foreign residents have also left, particularly in the first quarter of 2022, with the arrival of the omicron variant and the even stricter closure of the city.
Carrie Lam is expected to leave office with the lowest popularity for a chief executive, according to a poll by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange was up 1.4% after its announcement.