I was a Hong Kong resident for almost eight years while working with the largest insurance company in the world. I had a small team of local Chinese that supported me in providing claims and policyowners’ services in 16 countries in Asia.
I’ve not seen a corps of employees as dedicated and hardworking and I’ll never get tired praising them. All their energies were channeled to attain excellence and satisfy customers’ expectations. Their work is their world, and it seemed that nothing could ever distract them from work. However, one day in June 1989, they all left their posts and joined the first massive pro-democracy demonstration staged in Hong Kong to express their collective anger over Mainland China’s violent crackdown of student demonstrators protesting in Tiananmen Square, which history labeled as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
So I’m not surprised at all by the recent “people power” being staged by millions of Hongkongers, triggered by the proposed extradition bill that would allow criminal suspects in Hong Kong to be tried in Mainland China. Under the so-called one country, two systems framework, Hong Kong was guaranteed to retain its legal and political systems for 50 years after its handover from the British sovereign on July 1, 1997. Beijing should not be stunned by this bold action. Hong Kong residents zealously treasure their independence and cherish the human rights they have enjoyed since the British rule. China should respect its pledge that under Chinese rule, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall enjoy a high degree of autonomy except in the matters of foreign relations and defense, and that the social and economic system shall remain unchanged for 50 years, or until 2047.
There is a growing concern about China’s tightening grip over the semi-autonomous island. The massive protest actions reflect the people’s growing apprehension of Mainland authorities’ design to gradually curtail the rule of law in Hong Kong. Will the movement in Hong Kong encourage more pro-democracy actions in China and succeed to set up again the symbolic Goddess of Democracy (a replica of the Statue of Liberty), which was pulled down in Tiananmen by the Chinese authorities during the bloody dispersal of the student demonstrators?
I’m sure there are many who remain undaunted and inspired by the image of the Tankman who stopped a phalanx of tanks in Tiananmen that threatened to crush him.
Mao’s slogan may boomerang and we may yet see “a thousand flowers bloom” inside the communists’ bastion. As Alexander Pope has said in his poem, “An Essay on Man”, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast….”
The shelving of the extradition bill and the admission by Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam that she had misjudged the public temper appears to be a temporary reprieve for the opponents of the measure. Will it be permanently withdrawn and will the Central Government concede? The lesson here is that a government cannot bully its people who stand united and determined to oppose any abuse of state power. We should learn from it.
****
Charles Ponzi is one person who has lent his inglorious name to enrich our lexicon. He patented the classic scam of using money of new investors to pay off old investors for a handsome return, creating the impression of a successful investment. Despite the much-publicized devastating experience of millions of investors in Ponzi schemes, it seems that we don’t run out of gullible people who fall prey to such duplicity. If 5 million people swear that it’s not a scam and that they have been receiving the promised returns without fail, who would not be enticed to part with their hard-earned money, mortgage their farmlands and sell their carabaos and their small fishing boats in exchange for a 30-percent monthly return? I’m pleased that our President is not buying this, and has in fact ordered the NBI and the SEC to take decisive actions to put a stop to this financial scandal that became newspaper headlines. Our fervent hope is that the perpetrators of this recent fraud will be brought to justice, prosecuted and punished for their offense, if found guilty, and the poor victims, many of them OFWs who have labored hard away from their family for a meager wage, will be restituted for their losses.
****
My family feted me to a Father’s Day dinner in a Thai restaurant when an inebriated Dad who had obviously splurged on his one-day freedom in another table had attracted my grandson’s attention: “Lolo, what is an alcoholic?” he asked. “Do you see the two girls at the counter, grandson? An alcoholic would see four girls,” I explained. “But there is only one girl, Lolo.”