KEY IDEAS : 1. CY Leung will not attend the Standard Chartered Marathon. 2. He was accused of putting pressure on Standard Chartered Bank with the marathon miss. 3. The Secretary for Home Affairs will be attending instead.
FOR the first time since 1999, the Standard Chartered Marathon (渣打香港馬拉松) will not have the chief executive seeing off the thousands of runners this year.
Tung Chee-hwa (董建華), Donald Tsang Yam-kuen (曾蔭權) and current leader Leung Chun-ying (梁振英) were up for the run from 1999 to 2013.
But Secretary for Home Affairs (民政事務局局長) Tsang Tak-sing (曾德成) said in thelegislature that he will be attending instead of Leung on 16 February.
That had Leung rejecting claims he was giving the marathon a miss as he is unhappy with Standard Chartered for advertising in Apple Daily (蘋果日報), a fierce critic of his administration, or for other political reasons.
"Absolutely no," he said, adding that he would be on holiday for 10 days in February after a January with fewer working days.
"We receive loads of invitations to public events," Leung went on, adding that he needed to strike a balance in his schedule. He claimed it was appropriate for Tsang to be at the marathon as the Home Affairs Bureau is responsible for sports development.
But reports said that Leung has demanded that HSBC (香港匯豐銀行), Standard Chartered and Bank of East Asia (東亞銀行) withdraw advertising from Apple Daily, and legislators did not want to drop the issue.
They continued to press Tsang, asking him whether Leung was trying to put pressure on Standard Chartered with his marathon miss.
But Tsang would not be drawn into commenting on why Leung was unable to officiate, saying that question was for the Chief Executive's Office.
Lawmaker 'Long Hair' Leung Kwokhung (梁國雄), however, kept up the pace, asking Tsang if the chief executive was trying to reinforce a no-advertising demand on the bank. Tsang said he would not reply to "speculation".
Standard Chartered Bank, meanwhile, did not respond to The Standard's enquiries. And HSBC chief executive Anita Fung Yuen-mei (馮婉眉) said strategy was shaped by market situations.
Meanwhile, about 20 of the newspaper Ming Pao's (明報) staff and former employees, along with lawmakers, observed a minute's silence outside Legco (立法會) over the company's decision to immediately replace its chief editor.
(The Standard, Kelly Ip, 23 January, 2014)
from the Student Standard, News in Liberal Studies, Jan 27, 2014
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