Patten 'bares it all' in HK but for what?

Former British colonial governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten may or may not aspire to be a modern-day Don Quixote in his one-man show here in Hong Kong, but his behavior since appearing in public on Tuesday has been too similar to that fictional character's - in a perpetually caricaturized virtual reality - for people not to see him that way.

In a speech on Wednesday, the second day of his latest visit to the city, Patten fired a broadside with thinly veiled resentment toward the central government, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government led by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, all those who do not approve of what the opposition have been doing and even the judicial system; because a handful of his favorite "rebels" broke existing laws, have been found guilty by Hong Kong courts and sentenced to brief prison terms.

It is hard to tell how well he knows Hong Kong and its reality - from the way he sounded like he was still in charge and accused the Hong Kong judiciary over its handling of the recent high-profile cases involving former leading "occupiers". He went so far as to single out Joshua Wong Chi-fung, the poster-child of Western manipulation in Hong Kong whom he has praised profusely. By calling Wong the best thing that has happened to Hong Kong and ever will, he practically accused the city's judiciary of political prosecution, while completely ignoring the fact that "Occupy Central" never won the kind of popular support Wong and other organizers claimed to have.

Then he took an even more ridiculous swipe at the Chinese central authorities by urging President Xi Jinping not to see Hong Kong people as "dissidents", a condescending label Western hypocrites like him habitually put on anyone when they want to justify their meddling in other sovereign states' domestic affairs. Maybe he has no idea the central government trusts the great majority of Hong Kong residents as patriotic citizens who love the country as much as they do their hometown and would not allow anyone to ruin the city no matter what excuse is used. Or maybe he was betting on no one being the wiser if he did not mention it. The reality is he has grossly overestimated his own credibility.

As a career politician thoroughly trained to serve "British interests", Patten has shown time and again he couldn't care less how the general public in Hong Kong feels about the endless political sabotage by the opposition in the name of Western democracy. The version of democracy he wants in Hong Kong is the system that made his political career and therefore the only one he believes in, even though no one can ensure it works everywhere as well as advertised. Come to think of it, making Hong Kong adopt his version of a political system is simply impossible as long as the city is part of China.

(HK Edition 09/21/2017 page9)