MDT Interview | Allan Zeman on Occupy Central | ‘I wanted to experience it. It was impressive’

Allan Zeman

Hong Kong’s restaurant and resort tycoon, Allan Zeman, best known as the father of Lan Kwai Fong (he stills owns most of it and has two more LKFs in China) is also a board member of Wynn Macau. In an interview with the Times, he spoke about the Occupy Central movement and political reform. Surprisingly the pro-Beijing businessman – he’s a CCCP member – went to see Occupy Central for himself and was impressed, though he has always maintained that the students have made their point and should go home to allow businesses to operate as usual.
A strong supporter of failed CE candidate Henry Tang, Zeman also revealed to MDT why, in his view, Beijing switched support to CY Leung so late in the campaign.  It seems that it wasn’t the scandals or Tang’s declining popularity as many believed.
MDT – It’s seems you’ve been working overtime on meeting a lot of members of the nominating committee to sound them out about Occupy Central. How many people have you been talking to?
Allan Zeman – A lot, a lot.

MDT – You said that Occupy Central had some people on the nominating committee changing their minds about this?
AZ – I went to Admiralty. I spent four hours there. It was impressive because I just wanted to experience it for myself exactly. I don’t just like to listen to the media [and] watching on TV. Watching on TV I was out of town. You had a lot of reporters – international reporters – [for the] first time here talking about tanks [coming in] who have no idea, and [it] gives the wrong impression around the world. And that to me was something that was really a problem. I went down there because I wanted to experience it for myself. It was impressive.

MDT – The nominating committee has come under fire because it’s subject to external influence from pro-Beijing groups.
AZ – What I would say is when you are in that booth as part of that nominating committee, it’s you and the paper. No one knows who you are going to vote for, so if I want to vote for Long Hair [democratic legislator Leung Kwok-
hung] nobody’s going to know.

MDT – It’s a totally secret ballot?
AZ – It’s a totally secret ballot – same as the US, same as everywhere else.

MDT – But the day before CY Leung was elected I interviewed Tam Yiu-chung. He confirmed a newspaper report saying that a decision to back CY was only taken the night before the last day of campaigning, and after, there was uniform voting (60 votes) by a pro-China Federation of trade Unions for CY. Do you remember? You must have followed it?
AZ – Yes I remember.  I was going with Henry Tang at that time in the debate. Henry had given way secrets that had upset a lot of people in China and talked about things that he shouldn’t have. Robert Carroll, Hong Kong