Two front runners in the race to become Hong Kong’s next chief executive tried to brush off a round of negative publicity during the Lunar New Year holiday. Former financial chief John Tsang Chun-wah tried to dispel concerns that his repeated use of a Chinese idiom to describe his policy visions suggested he would take a “hands-off” approach to governing, while former chief secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was attacked on social media for giving money to an illegal beggar. When he on January 19, Tsang said society should listen to teenagers, some of whom might have wanted to create space in the community to “rest and recuperate”. He used the same words when he proposed abolishing the controversial Territory-wide System Assessment, which tests pupils’ learning in key areas. “We should let the schools and parents put down the inner demons of TSA and allow them to rest and recuperate,” he. Tsang’s repetition of the words have led some to speculate that he would adopt a non-interventionist and laissez-faire approach if he was elected, or worse still, sit on the many problems the government faces. Even his former boss, chief executive Leung Chun-ying took an apparent dig at Tsang on a recent radio programme. “If we adopt the ‘recuperate and laissez-faire’ approach and our competitors don’t, you can imagine the consequences,” he commented. Tsang hit back on a television talk show on Saturday. “Many people have misunderstood [the words] – I don’t know whether this was deliberate or due to a genuine lack of knowledge,” he said. “What I meant was really simple. We need to have less arguments – I believe many of us have become tired over the past few years.
