tim's experiment

I would like to know what has happened to all those commentators who were so eager to pick holes in the methodology of the Occupy Central referendum, and indeed before that in the methodology of the Hong Kong University’s Public Opinion project.  Occupy Central was a particularly popular target. A person who cared to buy a second phone card specially for the purpose could, horror of horrors, vote twice. Foreigners who had Hong Kong ID cards could vote. Dark suspicions were fostered. Lau Nai-keung dismissed the whole exercise as obviously fraudulent because the number of participants was so high.

Now we have the Silent Majority, alias the Alliance for Peace and Democracy, both of which seem to consist of Mr Robert Chow and a large pile of someone else’s money. Their signature campaign has passed muster with all those picky types who thought the Occupy Central people were not being careful enough. Mr Chow openly boasted that he thought tourists and children should be perfectly entitled to sign up. Precautions against duplicate signing were non-existent. Employers were invited to distribute signature forms to their staff, a gesture which could easily be misinterpreted. As Mr Chow’s claimed total passed the 900,000 mark I waited patiently, but in vain, for Mr Lau to dismiss it as too big to be convincing. I have written a letter to the Post pointing out that Mr Chow is about 3 million signatures short of his claimed world record, but whether it will see print remains to be seen.

Meanwhile down at HKU they announced that Lufsig’s approval rating had improved. And surprise surprise nobody wished to examine the detailed results or question the methodology of the survey. Clearly there are a lot of people around whose views on matters of this kind generally depend mainly on whether the item under consideration coincides with the current Liaison Office line.

This brings me to Mr Michael Chugani, who announced at the end of his latest diatribe against the democrats that his commitment to democracy was beyond question because he had called for it before the handover. This is not how it works, Michael. Before the hand-over calling for democracy was an entirely cost-free activity. Indeed as the great day approached some of the more paranoid PRC people thought the Hong Kong government was encouraging it. Calling for democracy now, on the other hand, is thoroughly unpopular with a wide range of usual suspects including the management of the Post and ATV. People who work for either organisation or both should accept that the pay cheque has some intangible costs attached to it.