Carrie Lam to be Hong Kong's first female Chief Executive

Carrie Lam, a Beijing-backed civil servant, was on 26 March 2017 chosen as the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong. With this, Lam becomes the first women to be named as the women chief of the financial hub.

Lam will become the Chief Executive of Hong Kong on 1 July 2017. She was chosen for the post with 777 votes while her closest rival John Tsang, the former financial secretary, was able to secure 365 votes.

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She was chosen for the post amid protests and accusations that Beijing is denying a more populist leader to the city. Accusations say, 7.3 million people of the city has no say in deciding their leader in the China-ruled city. The leader of the city is chosen from among several candidates by a 1200-people election committee, which is stacked with pro-Beijing and pro-establishment loyalists.

Victory speech of Carrie Lam

Lam in her victory speech pledged to follow the election promises that includes reducing tax to encourage research and development, the introduction of a two-tier profits tax, boost in educational spending and tackling the high cost of housing by increasing land supply among others.

She also said that her priority will be to heal the social divide of the city and unite the society to move forward. At present, the city of Hong Kong is suffering from a serious divisiveness.

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Carrie Lam

• Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive-designate of Hong Kong, has earlier served as the chief secretary for Administration of Hong Kong SAR Government, the most senior rank of principal officials of Hong Kong, from 2012 to 2017.

• A graduate of the University of Hong Kong, Lam joined the civil service in 1980 and has served in various bureaux and departments.

• Her handling of the demolition of the Queen's Pier helped her to earn the reputation as a tough fighter.

• Earlier, she had headed several projects including the Task Force on Constitutional Development on the political reform (2013 to 2015) and she also held talks with the student leaders during the large-scale protests in 2014.

• Earlier in January 2017, she resigned as the Chief Secretary to enter the 2017 Chief Executive election.