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December 16, 2004

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Sycophant-in-Chief Morning Post

The front page of today's SCMP splashes an article headlined Tsang juggles political hot potatoes with ease (reg. req'd, try this). A 5 column spread above the fold with 3 photos of Chief Secretary Donald Tsang dominates the page. The article starts:

He once appeared sidelined, destined to oversee projects no one else wanted, such as cleaning up Hong Kong. But Chief Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen regained his centre-stage position yesterday, as he juggled two of the city's hottest political potatoes with ease...After Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa launched his ministerial system, Mr Tsang was seen by many to have been reduced to a figurehead secretary without a real portfolio, asked to lead hygiene and cross-border projects.

But that image seemed to be relegated to history yesterday - and added fuel to rumours that Mr Tsang could be a dark horse in the next race for chief executive.

It's hard to know where to begin. It seems the SCMP has adopted Mr. Tsang as its candidate to replace Tung Che-hwa in 2007. Ironically one of yesterday's announcements by our "dark horse" candidate was on constitutional and electoral reform in Hong Kong. His other announcement yesterday was opening the public consultation over the newest developer boondoogle - the West Kowloon Cultural hub, or Cultureport. Not to let our Donald down, the SCMP obliges with a page 3 spread of the three alternatives (use this), along with dire warnings (use this) if the project does not happen and pictures of the hideous contenders (use this). Even the models don't do it justice - the area covered with the canopy is over 400,000 square metres!

In its coverage of the constitutional reform papers, the article (use this) focuses on the emerging "consensus" the next chief executive should be elected by between 1200 and 1600 people, instead of the current 800. They'll still all be appointed, but now 0.023% of HK's population will be represented instead of the currect 0.012%. What a victory! Oh, it ruled out those pesky calls by hundreds of thousands of marchers for universal suffrage with the simple formula that it is "inconsistent with Beijing's expectations".

Why bother worrying about press freedom when this paper censors itself?

Update: Hemlock today notices the same thing. It's a bit hard not to. Thank God I wasn't walking under the escalator today.

Update 2: Don't believe me on the censorship thing? Proof.

 posted by Simon on 12.16.04 at 09:44 AM in the




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