tim's experiment

I am rolling on the floor here. After all the fuss and pretentions … historic occasion, momentous change, first time in Hong Kong history, those who vote against will be criminals … the great Legco tussle over pseudo-reform ends in farce. According to early reports the problem was that the forces of reform/reaction knew that senile rural bandit Lau Wong-fat was anxious to vote for the proposal. But he was held up in traffic. They asked for an adjournment on entirely spurious grounds, which was refused. Then they thought they would challenge the quorum, and walked out, supposing that this would delay the vote. But alas the meeting was still quorate, the vote was held, and the government’s proposal suffered an unexpected fate. Instead of failing to reach the required two thirds majority it was resoundingly defeated. It was, as we used to say in rowing circles, pissed on from a great height.

Those of us who found it hard to take the DAB seriously before face a renewed struggle. There was an interesting programme on ATV the other week. An RTHK production, I hasten to add. The people making this item wished to investigate the political drift of young people. Of course they found and interviewed a yellow umbrella supporter who said the usual things. Then they introduced us to a young DAB member who did not say the usual things. He said he had joined the party because it would benefit his future business career. His friends, who were embarrassed about this but (I was glad to see) still his friends, said he was a “cunning Hongkonger”. I cannot believe that the RTHK people set out to find someone who had joined up for this sort of reason. This leads to the suspicion that nobody joins up for any other. This seems a cruel thing to say but does anyone join the pro-establishment group from what we might call nice motives? Or are they all a bunch of nitwits blinded by greed or ambition?

Of course I may be reading too much — or too little — into the unexpected demise of the reform proposal. Perhaps this was not an accident at all, but a cunning device to enable those DAB members who have to face the electorate sooner or later to say that they did not vote for the government’s plan anyway. We shall see. I notice that the democratic group who met Chinese officials in Shenzhen were warned that they would be “punished by the electors”. What do Chinese officials know about elections, one wondered. One also wonders what the electors will think of the organisers of the debacle last night. Would you want them running Hong Kong?