Liaison Office Forgetting Its Role, Says Alvin Yeung

The leader of the Civic Party, Alvin Yeung, said on Saturday that he fears the liaison office is forgetting its role – and its most recent statement betrayed an ignorance of Hong Kong’s capitalist system and an inability to reflect on what had happened over the past year.

The office issued a severe condemnation on Saturday of “extremist radicals”, accusing them of organising illegal gatherings, causing a nuisance to shops, and hurling petrol bombs during Friday’s Labour Day holiday.

“I’m not in the position to second guess what is going on in the minds of those who issued the statement from the central liaison office,” Yeung said.

But he said the liaison office’s latest statement was in line with a dramatic change in tactics seen since the anti-government protests last year and the replacement of Wang Zhimin as the office’s director by Luo Huining in January.

Describing Luo as “more a hardliner” than his predecessor, Yeung said the office was scaling up its comments and pressure on local issues.

“I fear that [the liaison office] is forgetting their role.” Yeung said the office is trying to step forward and interfere with local issues, including how the Legislative Council functions and how lawmakers vote on different items.

The Civic Party leader also took issue with the liaison office’s criticism of how and where people are spending their money.

“Any criticism on that is just showing their ignorance on the fundamental basics of the capitalist society,” he said.

He told RTHK’s Joanne Wong that the statement also reflected that those in power, including the liaison office, had no ability to “self-reflect” on what happened during the protests that erupted last year.

“When people are not happy with the society, when people are not happy with the governance, those in power should always have the ability to find out what went wrong and self-reflect,” he said.