Opinion | Coronavirus crisis: Why Beijing won’t fire Carrie Lam for botching the job again

On Monday, three knife-wielding robbers stole 600 toilet rolls from a delivery worker outside a supermarket in Mong Kok. The coronavirus outbreak has clearly driven some individuals to foolish behaviour, but it is the one behind the steering wheel – Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor – who is fully to blame. In the past eight months, Lam’s administration has completely lost of the trust of Hongkongers. Caught in the “Tacitus Trap”, the government is so unpopular that it can do no right.

The city is panicking due to a lack of transparency regarding medical supplies and daily necessities. Many are scrambling for essentials over fears that border restrictions to contain the coronavirus might choke off supplies.

With the outbreak, Lam had an opportunity to rectify the mistakes she made in pushing the notorious extradition bill last year, wreaking havoc in the city and endorsing the police’s excessive use of force against protesters. Given the city’s experience of severe acute respiratory syndrome, she was expected to handle the current crisis swiftly and regain the public’s trust. However, she is once again failing.

Since the coronavirus outbreak, public distrust of the government has only deepened. Lam has stopped short of fully closing the border with the mainland, even as imported cases lead to a bunch of local infections. She has also failed to ensure adequate supplies of masks and hand sanitisers for both the general public and medical staff.

So far, the governments of Macau, Taiwan and Singapore have all done better jobs than that of Hong Kong.

On top of her poor response to the current crisis, Lam has repeatedly criticised the frontline medical workers who went on strike to urge the government to close the border. Already, those who joined the strike might face punishment. Worse, might Lam’s administration be getting revenge on them by holding up supplies of protective equipment and creating an alarming shortage in wards?