Policy Address Is A Let-down, Say Pro-Beijing Camp

The Chief Executive's policy address lacks concrete proposals on how to get Hong Kong back to normal, some pro-establishment lawmakers complained on Wednesday, while others said the turmoil appears to have given Carrie Lam little time to think about anything else.

The city's biggest pro-Beijing party, the DAB, was among those unhappy with the address.

"It’s a conservative, procrastinating blueprint with little new ideas," said the party's chairwoman Starry Lee.

"Apart from calling for people to abide by [Hong Kong's] core values, we cannot see any concrete measures," Lee said.

The DAB also voiced disappointment that there are few welfare measures this year.

New People's Party leader Regina Ip noted that the policy address was drafted during an "unprecedentedly" difficult time, saying Carrie Lam's top priority was to restore public order.

But Ip, who's an executive councillor, also had her complaints about the contents of the address.

"Naturally, she was not able to address the fundamental problems with Hong Kong's economic development and that is the erosion of our competitiveness in many areas, including trade and logistics, as you can see from the decline of the throughput of our container terminal and the small size of our market, " she said.

"That's why the only strategies proposed by the Chief Executive are to leverage the mainland's market under the Greater Bay Area development, as well as the Belt and Road initiative."

The Liberal Party said it welcomed a move to relax mortgage rules, saying this would help young first-time buyers.

But the party's leader, Felix Chung, lamented the fact that only two pages of the blueprint were devoted to economic issues, adding that more could have been done to help the business sector, including measures to help SMEs with cash flow problems.

Meanwhile, Junius Ho said he was not happy that Lam had failed to offer more measures to quell violent protests. He said she should have invoked emergency powers once again, to ban the LIHKG forum and the Telegram app used by protesters.