Carrie Lam on the Defensive

Lam speaking at her daily press briefing today

While the tide is turning for the better day by day in the pandemic, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor is getting a political raking over the coals, particularly from the pro-establishment who have been backing her all along, but now are questioning how she intends to wrestle the fifth wave of the pandemic down for good.

The numbers are looking better today -- 8,035 cases, and 151 deaths (of which 130 are from the past 24 hours, 21 backlogged) -- but Lam has backtracked or flip-flopped, or U-turned on many decisions that has made the pro-Beijing camp frustrated that she doesn't seem to have people or the economy's interests at heart.

Businesses have had a difficult time with Covid-19

It has been reported Lam will face a grilling tomorrow by lawmakers on her pandemic policies. 

Everyone get out the popcorn...

But one can expect Lam to be on the defensive and strongly so, swatting away any annoying accusations with pithy statements that raise eyebrows.

One example is in recent days, Bernard Chan, convenor of the Executive Council, Lam's de facto cabinet, conceded many multinational companies that had used Hong Kong as their Asian base have already moved to rival cities like Singapore and Dubai, and the chances of them returning were slim, unless the Greater China market was their focus.

"If they had moved to other places such as Dubai and Singapore for a while, their chances of moving back are significantly lower because moving back will be quite a complicated process," he said. "I think we cannot stick to the [current] quarantine arrangement for a long time."

When a reporter asked Lam about Chan's comments, she said:

Chan says multinationals have left Hong Kong

"I can tell you that although he is ExCo Convenor, he is expressing his personal views. Because there are so many people with so many views on this anti-epidemic issue, especially about Hong Kong being an international city, whether we should open up more, whether we should be worried about people leaving Hong Kong. The more authoritative stance could come only from me and the Hong Kong SAR government," she replied.

Ouch. 

"I would advise that you only treat Mr Chan's views as his personal views, especially as he comes from the financial sector, certainly his view will be influenced by his colleagues and peers in the financial sector," Lam continued. 

"But at the end of the day, as I said, our ultimate objective for Hong Kong is to suppress the fifth wave as soon as possible and then we would aim to resume some travel into the mainland and preferably also with overseas so that business could resume and the economy could bounce back."

Many firms have moved to Singapore and Dubai

Chan is pointing out the fact that many multinational companies have moved out of Hong Kong and may never come back. How is that a personal view? There have already been many articles written about this, how 50 per cent of European companies are planning to leave the city or only have a smaller presence.

Businesses cannot wait for Hong Kong to open up anymore. Lam is dreaming if she thinks the city's economy will just bounce back to what it was before.

Lam seems to have no idea what is really going on, as she is so focused on fulfilling Beijing's expectations, or tired of hearing other people's opinions of how things could be done better.

They are only trying to help...