A quick look at today’s South China Morning Post confirms the inevitable, which is that
Hong Kong will have to get used to five, possibly ten, years of Leung Chun Ying,
who will, I predict, turn out to be just as malleable if brighter than the
first two disasters, Tung Chee Hwa and Sir Donald Tsang Yam Kuen.
The headline of the front-page article (“Beijing
Lobbies in Push for Leung Victory”) pretty much sums it up. Henry Tang
supporters are being leaned on to switch horses in midstream for the sake of
stability and “smoothness”.
Among all the predictable tales of Leung getting
a bigger photo and bigger font than his rival in yesterday’s Wen Wei Po and Tang getting no photo at
all in its sister paper Ta Kung Pao –
sure signs for the experienced China-watcher, as well as indeed for a
kindergarten pupil who hasn’t fallen asleep on its tiny desk, of Beijing’s
anointing – was a gem of the type one was beginning to think might be going out
of fashion as the Communists buy into the modern craze for lacing their
vocabulary, if not their thinking, with ugly words like “transparency” and “accountability”.
Building on Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s recent
comment that he and his mates would like to see elected a candidate with strong
public support, a source close to Beijing
Surely some mistake – the shadowy fellow meant
to say “expressing their views and
concerns”? I don’t think so. Some habits die hard. You can have all the talk
you want of “governance” and “transparency” – not least, because no one knows
what they mean – but at the end of the day there’s nothing that marks out a
total system quite as well as the right to think other people’s thoughts for
them.
After all the fun of the run-up to the non-election,
chances are that CY Leung will turn out to be merely a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
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