Lawmakers Mixed On Performance Of Outgoing CE

Carrie Lam's comment on Thursday that she's not ashamed of her performance as chief executive drew mixed reactions from lawmakers, with one saying the outgoing leader has done well in some aspects, but another pointing to inadequacies in her work.

At her last question-and-answer session in Legco, Lam said she has turned in a report card that she is not ashamed of, noting that her time in office coincided with Hong Kong's most challenging time since the handover.

But New People's Party lawmaker Regina Ip said she felt the government had been lacklustre in its handling of the 2019 extradition bill protests and the recent Omicron-driven Covid outbreak, saying these sagas "exposed the administration's inadequacies in crisis management".

"She [Lam] should have responded more decisively one way or the other. There were months when it looked like the SAR government was in wilderness, just drifting on, until Beijing decided to introduce the national security law," Ip told RTHK.

Ip, who's also an Executive Council member, said Lam has greatly increased recurrent expenditure during her tenure as CE, leaving the incoming government in a difficult financial position amid a possible global economic downturn.

Roundtable lawmaker Michael Tien said he would leave it to the public to pass judgement on Lam's performance.

But he noted that some 9,000 people had died during the latest wave of Covid infections, and around 10,000 people were arrested over the extradition bill protests.

"The extradition bill was supposedly initiated by her without any strong request from Beijing," he told RTHK.

"In fact, what was clearly needed to be done was Article 23 [national security legislation] rather than the extradition bill."

For her part, unionist lawmaker Alice Mak said while she is not happy with the CE's handling of the Omicron wave, she thinks Lam did well in labour policies, such as cancelling the MPF offsetting mechanism and increasing statutory maternity leave.