tim's experiment

In my experience of protests, which is 40 years out of date, the trickiest bit is the ending. Someone or some people have to craft an arrangement which leaves the protesters feeling that their actions and feelings have had some useful effect, without asking the authorities for things which are not in their gift. There has been a good deal of speculation lately about some sort of agreement, most of it by people who have spent the last year pelting Occupy Central with abuse, so their suggestions are perhaps unlikely to be taken very seriously.

Of course nothing I write here is likely to be taken seriously either, but as a purely theoretical exercise here is a sketch of what I think a sensible agreement to end hostilities might look like.

1. Lufsig must go. I realise this is going to be difficult but from a purely practical point of view it is essential. The problem is not that he is disliked by many and distrusted by even more. That is sad, but has been true since before he was elected. Nor is it an insuperable problem that in moments of crisis he turns into the People’s Parrot, reading a script prepared in the Liaison Office. Crises don’t come up that often. But the Chief Executive is not just an office worker; he is the symbolic head of Hong Kong, the person who opens bridges and bestows decorations. He also presides over all the UGC-funded universities. Since the events of the last week he is regarded by most people under 30 and a good many of the rest as the Man of Blood, who unleashed chemical weapons on unarmed demonstrators. Even Confucius would agree that if a father gasses his children you can kick him out of the house. Having an unpopular leader can happen to anyone. Having one who is loathed by all your best and brightest young people is unacceptable. People who think this is unfair to Mr Leung can console themselves with the thought that if he had kept his foot off the gas pedal Occupy Central would have been a harmless token two-day affair on a public holiday.

I realise there are a lot of faces at risk here and it may be necessary to approach this desirable end by a circular route. Mr Leung might have an unfortunate slip in the bathtub, or contract some obscure ailment requiring six months attendance at a specialist Swiss clinic. Or our colonial masters could demonstrate their often-voiced confidence in his administrative talents by giving him a job at national level, requiring residence in the nation’s capital.

2. Politics. Clearly it is no use asking the Hong Kong government to agree to any changes in the electoral arrangements approved by the NPC Standing Committee. But there would be no constitutional impropriety in the our government asking the committee to reconsider the matter.  And there is a good reason for doing so, because the request for this reconsideration could be accompanied by an admission that the assessment of Hong Kong opinion submitted before the committee’s previous discussions was a pack of lies, or whatever the diplomatic euphemism for such things is. As part of the agreement the Government would agree to commission an independent and reliable assessment of Hong Kong people’s opinions on political reform which could be submitted to the committee with the request for reconsideration. It is of course still possible that the request would be refused, or that after reconsideration the committee would reaffirm its original decision. At least it would do so knowing what Hong Kong people really want.

3. Reform. Recent events have revealed a huge gulf between the government and the governed, which is nothing short of scandalous in such a small place. Clearly one reason for this is the galloping politicisation of the advisory and consultative machinery, and the activities of the political appointee whose shameless task is to stuff every body to which the government makes appointments with Leung loyalists. This is not a good idea. Great organisations (the MTR springs to mind for some reason) are not helped if their boards are stuffed with Left-wing has-beens and never-wozzers selected for their political propensities.  The government’s network of advisory bodies was not set up to provide the Chief Executive with a cornucopia of lucrative part-time jobs for distribution among his friends. And the results are parlous: the government cannot hear the people sing because it is deafened by the chorus of adulation from its fans, who crowd every publicly available rostrum. The solution, I suggest, would be to set up an independent body to oversee all appointments in the government’s gift except those (the “accountability” crowd) which are explicitly designed to be political.

4. Policing. Here we have a tricky matter. Many protesters have no quarrel with the police, and those who have will generally concede that the police person on the street was just following orders from higher up. Cosmopolitan columnists have pointed out correctly that police handling of demonstrations in other places has on occasion been much worse. Most Hong Kong people still feel that we are lucky in our police force. On the other hand it cannot be disputed that since the present Commissioner took over there has been a consistent and considerable increase in the amount of force, and particularly the amount of chemicals, observed at protests. The Commissioner, Mr Andy Tsang, does not look like a square peg in a square hole. I realise that intellectual firepower is rather a low priority for street police people and a robust common sense is more valuable. Still, high command requires some sensitivity to the political and philosophical nuances of police work, and Mr Tsang brings to the post only an obdurate refusal to consider that his people can do any wrong. One gets the impression that if a squad of plods in full riot gear were filmed raping a nun in the middle of a protest Mr Tsang would defend this as a necessary part of the restoration of social discipline.  Still, if Mr Tsang gets the hoof it will be interpreted in police circles as an implied criticism, and this would not be helpful. So while one may hope that he will be encouraged to consider the delights of retirement (for which he is old enough) we should not, I think push for it.

Nevertheless the events of the last week do suggest that in some areas our police force has lost the plot. A person who is protesting may be a bloody nuisance, he may be committing a crime (though obstructing the streets of Central does not seem to be taken very seriously when done with a double-parked Alphard) and he may be disobeying orders. He or she is still a citizen who has the right to be treated as such. Pepper spray is not issued, or at least it shouldn’t be, so that individual police people can administer summary punishment to those they disapprove of by giving them a squirt in the face. The Force also seems to have overlooked the fact that the promiscous use of pepper spray in industrial quantities has made their warnings totally ineffective. Anyone near enough to the police lines to read the sign waved in the air has either hidden behind an umbrella or been sprayed. The sign is displayed to a sea of umbrellas, while policemen walk up and down behind the line directing a squirt at anyone who is not protecting his eyes. So the sign is clear enough on television but invisible to those at whom it is directed.

Clearly there is a need to reconsider the police approach to these matters, and we may legitimately insist that there is an inquiry, conducted by the police themselves, into whether it is still necessary and appropriate for the whole Force to be rotated through PTU training, whether the approach embodied in that training is appropriate to a society in which the right of assembly is constitutionally protected, and whether there should be some further restriction on the use of chemical weapons in situations where life and property are not in danger.

Well there it is – a dream – for there are no signs that the government is prepared to make any real concessions at all. It still seems to think the people are on its side, even though Mr Robert Chow’s phantom army of petition-signers and hunger marchers has dwindled to a few hundred rather suspicious-looking old men. A free and complex society needs to be governed with the consent of the governed. No victory will last if it is won at the cost of that consent.