Oscars and Politics
I have always enjoyed watching the annual Oscars show and I often stayed home to watch it, but this year I couldn’t because I had an appointment with my eye surgeon who had operated on my left eye and who would do my right after my Nepal trip. So I missed the real life drama; and I thought it was a joke when my friend told me in the evening about the mixed up. How hilarious, and how embarrassing it must have been for many people.
I have watched La La Land. I like it, and I said at the time I won’t be surprised if it gets the Best Picture Oscar. La La Land may not appeal to many people outside Hollywood and the American film industry, but these are not the people who decide on who gets what Oscars, which is why one can tell the films that are tailored made to appeal to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and to win Oscars. The annual Oscars shows have always been highly politicized – it has all the ingredients for politics and one would be surprised if there were no politics involved.
Back to Hong Kong, we have once again become famous worldwide for the wrong reason. Now everyone knows that we have a former chief executive serving time in a maximum security prison. The judge who sent him to jail said that he had not seen anyone falling from such height. It is not only bad for the person, it is bad for Hong Kong. Already, people are speculating who would be next together with questions on why people would be interested in becoming chief executive at all.
Meanwhile, we now have three confirmed contestants for the office of the next Chief Executive and it looks like there won’t be a fourth. To some extent, our chief executive election may be no different from an Oscars show, except for the lack of glamour, beautiful clothes and jewelries, visual effects, song and dance, interesting speeches and plenty of jokes. On the other hand, while it has been reported that the audience ratings of the Oscars show has been falling consistently for the ninth year, I suspect there is no lack of media interest in the upcoming contest, and before long, we can expect the usual scramble for slips of the candidates and for bad news and dark sides on them, real or imagined. Already, Regina Ip has publicly lamented that Carrie Lam may be a competent and effective public servant, she does not make a good politician.
At the end of the day, the joke will be on the electors and the 300 something so called democrats among them will be the sure losers. It therefore comes as no surprise that not one amongst the close to 600 votes that Carrie Lam has submitted to the Election Office was from the pan-democrats. The pan-democrats have offered to provide eight to ten votes to help Regina Ip to the start line. Regina promptly thanked them, but in the same breath suggested she needed a lot more than eight to ten votes. The obvious implications are that the pan-democrats are amateur politicians who not only do not have a policy platform, but are also short on principle and party discipline. Why would any serious person have any regard for them?
