In a move demonstrating his brazen contempt for universally accepted diplomatic norms and principles governing international relations, United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday “warmly” congratulated Hong Kong’s opposition camp for its “successful primary election” held over the weekend.

The so-called primary election — engineered by experienced political schemer Benny Tai Yiu-ting, one of Washington’s most loyal proxies who have been doing its bidding in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region since the “Occupy Central” movement in 2014 — was designed to rig the September election for the region’s legislature.

The modus operandi is simple yet deceptive. By manipulating the results of the “primary election” through a flawed poll process, Tai and his co-schemers produced fake popularity for their preferred candidates; namely, the radicals who have promised to block indiscriminately all of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government’s major policies and initiatives, including the annual budget, after the radicals make it to the legislature. The ultimate aim of this agreed collective action is to paralyze the HKSAR government in order to extort political ransom.

The schemers are now ramping up pressure on those candidates who did not agree to take part in their collective action, forcing them out of the race — with “moral persuasion” based on the fake popularity “rankings” created by the “primary election”. The ultimate objective of the maneuver is to reduce the contenders within the opposition bloc in the hope that the candidates anointed by the schemers will win in the September election. But the schemers are deluding themselves when peddling their fake popularity rankings purportedly obtained from the 600,000 individuals who participated in the “primary election”, who are in no way representative of the region’s 4.1 million registered voters.

By any yardstick, the “primary election” contradicts the democratic principles of transparency, fairness and justness. It is part of a plot to hijack the HKSAR’s legislature and paralyze the government. In congratulating the Hong Kong opposition camp for the “successful primary”, Pompeo was in effect giving a pat on the back to the political schemers, a move blatantly interfering in Hong Kong’s affairs, which are essentially China’s internal affairs — in total disregard of the nonintervention principle of international law that prohibits outside nations from interfering with the internal affairs of another nation.