Politicians - East meets West

Hong Kong’s leading officials don’t talk. They read aloud.

I really really dislike the fact that they fail to talk properly without referring to their iPad or a slip of paper. I acknowledge that sometimes one needs to quote statistics, or to get across a complex idea and that’s when you need something to help you. But why would you need to read from a script, for instance, while delivering an apology or merely telling people something that you have done? It’s absurd.

Take the Budget Speech earlier this month as an example. Why would any Legco member want to sit there and listen to the monotone of the Financial Secretary? He stood there like a statue with his eyes focusing on his reading stand. His delivery was lifeless and emotionless. Honestly, I don’t blame those who couldn’t resist and doze off. What’s the point anyway - when everyone was given a copy of the “speech” at the beginning of the meeting, one might as well read it at their own leisure.

On the other side of the world, President Obama was giving the State of the Union address. From what I can tell, he did not read from a script. There could be a teleprompter, but I can’t tell. It didn’t show anyway. He was poised. He kept looking around while addressing the congressmen. He controlled and varied the pace of his delivery. He enhanced his speech with appropriate gestures. Overall, he was natural and confident. It was such a joy just to listen to him.

I often wonder how politicians in the West can be so charming and charismatic, whereas the ones in Hong Kong, most of them anyway, are just drop-dead dull. Is this something to do with our upbringing – that people in the West are encouraged to speak up while Orientals are taught to be more reserved?

Somehow, you really cannot help but ask why there’s no Winston Churchill, or Martin Luther King, or Barack Obama, to name just a few, in our part of the globe. 

Sad but true.