Newly minted Chief Executive Carrie Lam vowed to heal the rift between the legislative and executive branches of government during her first official LegCo Q&A session yesterday morning, but stopped short of making any promises on topics like suffrage or safeguarding the city’s autonomy.
Lam began the meeting by saying she had personally reached out to lawmakers from various parties to communicate with them better. Pro-democracy lawmaker “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung then interjected to say he hadn’t been contacted. (Awkward.)
To foster better relationships between her administration and the legislature, Lam says she has asked all of her cabinet members to communicate more with lawmakers and appear at LegCo meetings more frequently. The CE also announced her plans to move her policy address up to October, rolling back predecessor CY Leung’s decision to hold his in January.
During the question and answer session, legislator Nathan Law asked Lam whether she agreed that police officers had abused their power in relation to last week’s allegations that activists Avery Ng and Figo Chan had been beaten in a police van, and what she would do to “restore the public’s confidence in the police force”.
Lam retorted that police, especially frontline officers, were under “a lot of stress” from “controversial issues” that had risen recently, but clarified that she didn’t see an “abuse of power”. In regards to the Avery Ng case, Lam said, “Frontline officers are interacting with the members of the public and also in a demonstration situation. If [protesters] feel hard done by, there is a mechanism for complaints and there is a complaint system which can bring those people justice.”
When asked by lawmaker James To if she could promise to pave the way for universal suffrage by 2022 through political reform, Lam replied, “Political reform has always been very sensitive, very complicated and very difficult.”
“If I … restart political reform immediately, such that the society becomes embroiled in serious conflicts again and the economy and livelihood issues come to a standstill, then as the person with the utmost responsibility, I would have failed,” she said, according to Reuters.
Alvin Yeung, leader of the Civic Party, asked Lam whether she would do more to restrict China’s involvement in Hong Kong affairs, particularly the Chinese Liaison office. Yeung proposed to enforce this by introducing laws based on article 22 of the Basic Law, which states: “No department of the Central People’s Government and no province, autonomous region, or municipality directly under the Central Government may interfere in the affairs which the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region administers on its own.”
Lam responded that she doesn’t see the need for new laws to be put in place for that matter and stated repeatedly throughout the meeting that the Hong Kong government would work independently of China.
During the rest of the hour-long session, lawmakers quizzed Lam on topics such as welfare, elderly care and tourism. Reuters reports that the mood in the chamber was less hostile during Lam’s session than those of her deeply unpopular predecessor, CY Leung. Having said that, it’s probably not too amazing of a feat considering that Leung received an approval rating of only 38.7 percent in the weeks before he left office, according to the University of Hong Kong’s public opinion program.
