Back to Bitching about the HK Government…

Glutter’s Hong Kong

Lately, I have been thinking how much I hate what’s happening to Hong Kong. To the point I just avoid the news, don’t read the papers. It’s like every time I read or listen, there is something about something that bugs me so much that I feel like I need to do something. Except I am reminded that there isn’t much i can do outside of go down and hold up a few placards. Complain on public radio, write on a blog. All of which is what everyone in Hong Kong is doing all the time anyway, and it doesnt’ seem to make a difference. Each time I think about the things I don’t like about my government it reminds me I am powerless. There is nothing anyone can do because we can’t lobby, we can’t let our views be known to our representative, we can’t even sit there and think, "Next election, I am sure not going to vote him/her in again."

Powerless as I watch things that has everything to do with my life take place, but I have no say. The courts have no say. The people have no say. The few elected legislators have no say. Which if I take a few seconds more to think about it really comes down to us not having the vote.

I hate the fact they will reclaim the star ferry and queen’s pier and shove a highway right in what used to be public space. It’s the most important landmark with historical significance it’s a beautiful place, it’s something that has always been there since I was a child. It’s just one of those things and places that really should be kept. It’s the mainstay of Central. It’s the launch pad of our sky line, and without it, what is Hong Kong?

I hate the whole west Kowloon thing. I hate the way the government and the press made this whole deal about the "canopy" when it wasn’t the canopy but the fact whose "friends" were going to get a large chunk of public land to build private buildings for as long as they put up a "cultural" district which would have ended up being a giant mall anyway.

I can’t stand the way the whole KCRC thing went down. Fire top management and keep a board member. Write warning letters to 11 of the remaining management for speaking pretty much the truth, just so that one measly, annoying legislator/business person would have face. I mean the man will be leaving the post at the end of the year. Why keep him on? Maybe they were always planning to fire the KCRC guys because of the merger, but the whole thing that was played out in the press was more of the same. Whipping the public into a frenzy over something that is part and parcel to how things are run to justify whatever the government and their cronies want.

My government takes no account of morale of the people, the morale of an organization, the cultural mainstays of this city.

But how can it be any other way?

It’s the fact you have a bunch of people who are willing to work for a government that has no real power, who at the "right" moments are effective puppets and because of that, do not and cannot think for themselves. They just defer to power at any given point, and money, the businesses, the tycoons are in effect the shadow government because they have power. More power than the central government in fact. I mean someone in the city must have the power, if it’s not the people than it must be the elite and like all elites, they don’t really have to care about what every day people think or care about. China may run the over all political structure, but big money runs the rest of Hong Kong. And the thing is, those guys don’t catch the star ferry, they don’t catch the train, they don’t need a public space to walk on in the weekends.