The chairman of the pro-business and conservative Liberal Party has said in an interview that Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying should not run for a second five-year term.
“Personally I don’t think he should [run],” Felix Chung Kwok-pan said in a TVB Pearl interview aired on Tuesday night.
“He has delivered three policy addresses, but [many of his] proposals have not been implemented… There is no clear direction for the city’s economic development,” Chung said.
Asked if he supports the Liberal Party’s former chairman James Tien’s comment that Leung was Hong Kong’s worst leader since the 1997 handover, Chung replied, “Of course.”
Chung also said the Liberal Party will “probably not” support Leung if he runs again.
He said Leung met with party members only a few times during the last three years.
He also cited comments from the business sector that a lot of people do not like Leung, because “for the future of Hong Kong, there is no clear direction. It’s very divisive right now.”
Lawmaker Wong Kwok-kin of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions said he did not know why Chung found it necessary to comment on Leung running for a second term.
The central government has only asked the pro-Beijing camp to support Leung Chun-ying, but this does not mean it is necessary to support Leung running for another term, Wong told Ming Pao.
Previously, Leung’s approval rating dropped to 39.2 marks, more than five marks below the 45 threshold, according to the latest results from the University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Programme. The threshold is used as a credibility crisis indicator.
Chung was first elected to the Legislative Council in 2012. He was representing the Textiles and Garment constituency. He became chairman of the Liberal Party in 2014.
