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Lau Nai-keung

To quote a recent popular saying: 'This city is dying.' I think quite a lot of people in Hong Kong will agree with me that the University of Hong Kong is dying along with it. Its centenary celebration last August  turned out to be a big mess which led to an internal investigation.
The subsequent report admitted to the mess and faulted the university for administrative blunders. Now,  those supposedly responsible  have resigned - behaviour typical of a dying establishment.  
In what kind of a university would students be caught making a nuisance during a grand celebration, then lying about how events unfolded? And in which other university can we find a dean of the law faculty making a rash statement on a point of law against the university, which he later retracts  but without a word of apology? Surely, if a practising lawyer made such a mistake, he wouldn't keep his job. 
This fiasco is rooted in the fact that the university didn't know what it was doing and what it wanted. And when something happened, many of its staff - from the vice-chancellor down - panicked. This is not how one of Hong Kong's most celebrated academic establishments should conduct itself.
It has now transpired that the police did not force their way into the campus but were invited by the university to assist in maintaining law and order during the ceremony; they became an easy scapegoat.    
 Vice-Premier Li Keqiang was the main victim in the affair. He came in good will at the invitation of the university and brought gifts, not only to the host but to Hong Kong. But he was portrayed as the chief villain from the moment he sat in the VIP chair on stage, provided by his host; he was criticised for dominating the ceremony and influencing  the security arrangements. 
These charges were again thrown out by the investigation, but I wonder how much damage has been done between Hong Kong and the central government. Judging from the recent heated exchange of words between Hongkongers and mainlanders, the wound is gaping at the grass-roots level.
 There was nothing wrong with the ceremony or the security arrangements. What went wrong was that the  university didn't stand firm, with the vice-chancellor apologising to students for no reason at all.
A university  that does not know right from wrong has already lost its soul. Divorced from national history and the huge suffering and humiliation since the opium war, there is no Hong Kong history, and subsequently there is no soul and no salvation.
Lau Nai-keung is a member of the Basic Law Committee of the NPC Standing Committee, and also a member of the Commission on Strategic Development



With no moral compass, HKU will lose its way