Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced this Monday (4) that she will not run for a second term in the indirect elections scheduled for May, after a term marked by the repression of pro-democracy demonstrations and severe restrictions against democracy. Covid that isolated the Asian financial center.
With the announcement, Lam, 64, ended months of speculation about whether or not he would try to stay in the job. “I will complete my five-year term as chief executive on June 30 and will officially end my 42-year career in government,” he told reporters on Monday.
She said that Chinese authorities “understand and respect” her decision and that she had already informed Beijing in March last year. Lam attributed the decision to family reasons. “I have to put my family members first. And they feel it’s time to come home.”
Born in 1957 during the period of British rule in Hong Kong, Lam is a career civil servant and describes herself as a devout Catholic. The first woman to rule Hong Kong, she took office in 2017 with an expectation of unity in a city that increasingly resented Beijing’s authority.
Two years later, mobs of Hong Kongers took to the city’s streets in anti-government protests, some of them with acts of violence. At the height of the protests, she even said she would resign if she had a choice. In a conversation with Hong Kong executives, he said, according to a recording obtained by journalists, that the city’s ruler “has to serve two masters by the constitution: the central government and the people of Hong Kong”, and that “the political space for maneuver is very, very, very limited.”
The demonstrations led Beijing the following year to impose a national security law that further increased the Communist Party’s control over the city.
Lam was the first Hong Kong ruler to be sanctioned by the United States for her support of the crackdown. China and the government in Hong Kong deny that individual freedoms were suppressed and say the national security law was important in restoring the stability needed to revive the region’s economy, one of the world’s biggest financial hubs.
Another turning point in Lam’s management was the application of the Covid zero strategy, with the imposition of some of the most restrictive measures in the world to contain the spread of the coronavirus. As a result, the city remained virtually isolated from the world for 18 months, with borders almost closed and strict quarantines.
But the strategy foundered with the arrival of the omicron variant, which spread with speed and led Hong Kong to record one of the highest mortality rates among developed nations.
Over the past two years, there has been a steady outflow of residents to other countries, at a rate not seen since the UK’s transfer to China. Thousands of expatriate foreigners also left the city, especially in the first quarter when the oncoming outbreak made it clear that the island would remain isolated.
Elections were scheduled to take place in March but were postponed to May 8 due to the Covid outbreak. Loyal to Beijing, the committee that elects the city’s next leader has 1,500 members, an electoral college equivalent to just 0.02% of the territory’s population, which has 7.4 million inhabitants.
The future ruler will be chosen on May 8, but so far no name with real prospects of victory has presented the candidacy.
The current number two in the local government, John Lee, 64, who has experience in security matters, is touted by the press as a possible candidate. He is also targeted by US sanctions and was promoted in 2021, in a move that was seen as Beijing’s gamble more on security issues than the city’s economy.
Two other names in the betting pockets are the city’s finance secretary, Paul Chan, and Leung Chun-ying, who was chief executive from 2012 to 2017, before Lam.
Lam said he has not yet received any resignation requests from his secretaries, a step cabinet members must take if they are to run for chief executive.
The successor is expected to take up the post on July 1, the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return from the UK to China. One of the agreements that made it possible to hand the territory back to Beijing’s control in 1997 was that the Communist Party would guarantee a series of freedoms for the next 50 years, which critics say has not been respected.
