Vote for the Only Candidate

Lee reveals his softer side during an election rally yesterday

Yesterday the sole candidate running for chief executive, John Lee Ka-chiu, made a last push for votes at a highly choreographed rally at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Sort of modelled on the US presidential elections, several people came up on stage to endorse Lee, including his campaign director Tam Yiu-chung, the sole Hong Kong representative of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, and former chief executive Leung Chun-ying, who is the chief convenor of the Election Committee with his peer, Tung Chee-hwa.

Leung made a pitch to endorse Lee

Interesting Leung made a pitch for Lee when Leung himself had expressed interest in becoming CE again. But perhaps this was the instruction from above, to play nice and support the only person running...

Meanwhile journalists were totally baffled by the slogan for Lee's rally: We and Us A New Chapter Together.

"We and Us"? 

In Chinese it literally says "Me and We", but that's also grammatically weird too, and besides his copywriting team has made many mistakes throughout his entire campaign that is basically a slam dunk.

Finally the man of the hour (if elected), arrived on stage. The emcee even asked people to turn on the lights on their phones and wave them in the air as if Lee were a rockstar about to sing a ballad.

He talked about his humble beginnings, living in Sham Shui Po, and how his family was poor, but his father managed to scrape together enough money to buy a television set. 

"We and Us"? What does that mean exactly?

After dinner they gathered around the TV and opened the wooden door, but closed the iron gate to allow the breeze in, and neighbours would stand nearby to watch the TV behind them. Lee said they later turned up the volume so they could listen and then eventually invited neighbours to come in to watch TV with them.

Then he quickly went over his four or five items on his election platform, including housing, security for stability, and develop the economy among them, and then that was it.

So this is the man Beijing wants to lead Hong Kong, from one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city to becoming one of the highest paid leaders in the world at over HK$400,000 (US$51,000) a month -- apparently in cash.

What a rags-to-riches story.

He told about when he was robbed by older classmates once and was punched in the chest for not having any money to offer them, and felt angry he didn't dare speak up and decided to become a law enforcer instead, entering the police force at the age of 19. 

That's the reason why the almost 1,500 people on the Election Committee should vote for him.

Do they have any other choice?