Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Former Liberal Party leader James Tien, the (allegedly) shallow inheritor of an unearned textiles fortune, does his bit for the long overdue campaign by Hong Kong’s tycoons to address the fact that everyone increasingly hates them. “We used to think our role was just to boost the economy and create more jobs,” the South China Morning Post quotes him as saying; now he and some business buddies will set up a foundation to pay for old folks’ cataract operations and give students interest-free tuition loans.

Unlike the Centum Charitas band of rich-kids playing at being do-gooders, this group does not seem to be orchestrated by Beijing’s local representatives (not least because the cadres would have chosen someone less unlikable and witless to front it). Indeed, it could be that the nation’s leadership are the prime intended audience for what is – you can guarantee it if Tien is involved – a superficial and naïve little PR stunt.

While it would be going too far to suggest that the Chinese Communist Party is reassessing its close ties with the Big Lychee’s parasitical inherited wealth and cartels, there are unmistakable signs of a shift in emphasis. Beijing’s concession to the Democratic Party over the 2012 electoral reform package came as a shock to people who see themselves as an exclusive business elite entitled to unique access to power.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong government seems to be losing patience, in its own snail-like way, with the grander and grander excesses of the property developers. Two examples are the slight clampdown on exploitative and deceptive real estate marketing techniques, and the cruel official humiliation of Henderson Land over apparently phony apartment sales to ramp up prices. A third may be on the way if Development Secretary Carrie Lam manages to scale back the scam that allows developers to build much bigger projects in exchange for including ‘green’ features like vast club houses that – amazingly – simply further boost their own profits (and, I am told, increase their long-term gouge-grip on residents via the voting power the multiple swimming pools and other facilities give them in condominium owners’ committees).

It could be that amid all the fretting about the Big Lychee’s creeping disharmony and radicalism, some officials are starting to muse over the possibility that the privileged blood-sucking, rent-seeking freeloader likes of Tien are part of the problem – and it is starting to dawn on Tien and Co.

As if to assure everyone that the tycoons have not fallen from grace, the curious nurturing of their offspring continues, with the aforementioned Carrie putting not one, not two, but three junior plutocrats into the new Harbourfront Commission. (To paraphrase the SCMP: Benjamin Cha, grandson of Cha Chi-ming of HKR International, lord of the Disco Bay manor; Lily Chow, daughter of Chow Yei-ching of Chevalier, which has just sold 80% of Pacific Coffee for HK$360 million [note to self: worth marrying?]; and Eric Fok, son of inactive legislator Timothy and grandson of Henry, patriotic exporter of embargoed materiel to the motherland during the Korean War.)

While some will resent this as a blatant reward for being born into a rich family, there is something more subtle going on. Carrie is cunning (not to mention hungry for public acclaim in 2012). It’s a cheap way to give a bit of face to the proud fathers, and a similarly cheap way to have them owe you one; the next step a few years on is to dangle the prospect of a Justice of the Peace tag for the kids before their dads – they will do anything. More important, in time it will probably put these scions into a painful position.

A seat on a sensitive advisory committee whose work will be watched by every environmentalist, heritage freak and post-80s radical is a double-edged sword. A pat on the head, perhaps, but also a recipe for extreme public opprobrium if you are caught showing any sympathy to a property company, having any truck with an inch of reclamation or touching a single hair on some baby dolphin’s head. As popular discontent swells, and our feudal business elite’s date with the noose draws nearer, these tycoon-kids are being thrown in the deep end. The local traditional business community that they will one day inherit needs to be rehabilitated, and it will take more than a frivolous Victorian-style James Tien charity for the ragged poor.

Lawyers Andrew Lam and Kevin Egan are conclusively cleared of perverting the course of justice after the Court of Final Appeal respectively quashes and refuses to un-quash their previous convictions. The saga goes back six years and is a perfect example of why top legal folk deserve high salaries simply for putting up with the excruciatingly tedious and mind-numbing detail they have to deal with.

What started as a tiresome enough share-manipulation case plunged into a bog of ‘he-said she-said’ finger-pointing when the Independent Commission Against Corruption reacted badly to the lawyers’ attempts to contact, and thus publicly identify, a witness who was under the anti-graft sleuths’ protection. (Or something like that; my threshold of tolerance for explanations of legal cases that require more than one sentence is low at the best of times.) To hear the ICAC tell it, Lam and Egan had committed a terrible outrage against law and justice.

However, the graft-busters’ own behaviour also raised eyebrows. They dragged the alleged villains into custody, they raided newspapers, they produced a creepy porn-fan witness. And… they demanded that the Foreign Correspondents Club hand over Egan’s bar bill.

It was at this point that even the most casual onlooker saw that the ICAC was Trying Way Too Hard here. Lam and Egan had a history of successfully defending people against the ICAC, and it was looking personal. It possibly didn’t help that the Hong Kong government at the time was going through an extra severe bout of paranoiac bad-loser syndrome.

The outcome, after Egan did a spell in prison, is that the ICAC today end up looking even more stupid than Lam and Egan had made them look in the past. Gory artists’ impressions of a woman having acid flung in her face by her husband occupy some front pages, but the victory of what the Standard likes to call the ‘ICAC killers’ is at least Hong Kong’s number-two story this morning.

We were all brought up to believe that the ICAC is the upright and honourable law-enforcement agency that, reporting directly to the Chief Executive, keeps the Big Lychee’s playing field squeaky clean, civilized and, of course, level. That image dates back to the cleaning up of the police back in the 1970s. In modern times, however, the agency has a noticeably thin record of achievements, largely hurling the book at private-sector nonentities indulging in – and being dumb enough to get caught at – pitiful scams.

Meanwhile, some senior civil servant somewhere makes a discretionary decision or mysteriously leaves loopholes in some fine print. The floor area at Henderson Land’s Grand Promenade site in Shaukeiwan is raised from 85,720 sq meters to 135,451. Cousins of New Territories village chiefs win endless fat contracts for pointless public works projects. The New World/Urban Renewal Authority’s hulking Masterpiece in Tsimshatsui transmutes from offices, to hotel, to serviced apartments, to (unzoned-for) private residential use. And on, and on, and the ICAC is nowhere to be seen, unless it has someone’s FCC bar bill in its sites.

This is hooliganism, not democracy, intones the Standard’s ‘Mary Ma’ editorial, lamenting the outbreak of highly emotional inter-tribal strife within Hong Kong’s opposition camp. To the purists among fighters for universal suffrage, the Democratic Party is a bunch of traitors for voting through the government’s electoral reform package last week. For the first time since 1949, arguably, the Chinese Communist Party made a concession to a rival political group – but they are not impressed. Just as the CCP’s sole reason for existence today is to keep itself in power, so the hardline pro-democrats’ only purpose is a perpetual struggle for a logical impossibility: full universal suffrage in a one-party state. The DP’s realism won it a major symbolic victory when Beijing made its compromise, and their more dogmatic cousins are so angry that they are even threatening to shunt the turncoats to the back of the annual pro-democracy march on July 1.

In fact, the pan-democrats – always a broad coalition of the free-to-disagree – should be reasonably happy. The radical League of Social Democrats are entrenching their position as home of the diehard militants and activists. The Civic Party can bask in the afterglow of Audrey Eu’s stomping of Donald Tsang in the Great Chief Executive Debate Slaughter of 2010. The DP, after years of dust-gathering and neglect, is suddenly, by Hong Kong opposition standards, a heavy hitter whose existence Beijing officials actually recognize. It is the pro-government parties who are looking despondent.

The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong look more than ever like the CCP’s local proxies everyone knows them to be. First they opposed the Democratic Party’s demand; then, when the Liaison Office phoned up with the latest version of the truth, they dutifully started to say it was OK. The crowds they attracted to their pro-government demonstrations got lunch boxes and tours of (there must be a reason) the Museum of Coastal Defence for their trouble, but what do the DAB’s senior leaders get in return for their unquestioning obedience? The satisfaction of loyally serving the patriotic cause by being made to look stupid by the Party – and pretending to enjoy not being allowed to complain about it.

At least the Liberals, the pro-inherited-wealth party, are free to whine. Which is what member and National People’s Congress deputy Michael Tien does in today’s South China Morning Post. When the Liberals proposed a slight opening up of functional constituencies, he grumbles, they were ignored. Yet when the Democrats did it, they got invited to tea with Beijing’s emissaries. Small pro-establishment parties (the ridiculous Economic Synergy group of ex-Liberals being the other) are being taken for granted, marginalized “in the eyes of the electorate” and starved of “the oxygen of public recognition and support,” Tien protests, in the wounded and rejected tone of a five-year-old whose parents are devoting more attention to a newly arrived sibling.

The reason for this, as the accompanying photo shows, is that Tien has a fantasy about winning in a real election in which real people can vote. Unlike his shallow brother James, Michael has a hankering for legitimacy as some sort of man of the people, which is rather touching for someone born into one of the Shanghainese families (Chief Secretary Henry Tang’s being another) that got rich simply by selling textiles quotas acquired for free from the colonial government. Touching, and also telling. Long Hair and Co may not get past the nomination process for future functional constituency seats; nor will the most fragrant and mellifluous Civic Party members, or even Beijing’s new best buddies in the Democratic Party. But people like Michael Tien will be able to sail through the screening mechanism and take part in a democratic-with-HK-characteristics election. And he’s already upset about not being noticed enough.

Yawning, bleary-eyed half-ghosts roam the top floor of S-Meg Tower this morning after Hong Kong endures yet another sleepless night fretting about whether the saintly Martin Lee will quit the Democratic Party over its decision to support the government’s non-reform electoral package for 2012. Lee personifies the idealistic zeal of the Big Lychee’s pro-democrats: single-mindedly committed to the principle of full universal suffrage; drawing strength, like martyrs with flames licking their feet, from every menacing utterance from Beijing; and never being more than briefly distracted by such trifling and grubby irrelevances as the practical economic and social injustices created by the existing system.

Meanwhile, down there in the heart of Asia’s leading international business hub, the police are installing an elaborate network of defenses around the Legislative Council, comprising layers of shiny plastic tape and metal barriers and, later today, not one, not two, not three, but probably half a dozen or more thin blue lines – adding up to quite a thick blue line, pepper spray at the ready – to enable lawmakers to get through crowds of protestors. The demonstrators, incensed at the Democratic Party’s treachery, will be out to lay siege to the area and in particular harangue turncoats like party leader Albert Ho. What they will find is that the Hong Kong Police, after letting activists trap lawmakers inside for hours last January, are going to do what they do best: go massively and ridiculously over the top to make sure it doesn’t happen again. This is going to outperform the Maginot Line or the Great Wall and actually work. This one you really will be able to see from space. (By the way, this will be a good night to pull off a major crime – there won’t be a spare cop anywhere in town.)

To break the tension, S-Meg Holdings staff compare summer vacation plans. Ms Fang the hunter-killer secretary and her husband are going to fly 1,000 miles to a luxury resort with lush tropical greenery, snorkel diving, rejuvenating spa, international buffet, personal valet and rose petals in the bath (slight chance of mob in coloured shirts closing airport down). Deputy Managing Director Mr Chan and his family will be flying 900 miles to a luxury resort with lush tropical greenery, snorkel diving, pampering spa, international buffet, personal valet and scented candles next to the bath (minor chance of coup). Ms Lu the buck-toothed Company Secretary and her parents will fly 1,400 miles to a luxury resort with lush tropical greenery, snorkel diving, idyllic spa, international buffet, personal valet and organic aromatic oils for pouring into the bath (tiny chance of Muslim fanatics and seriously minuscule possibility of cannibals). Johnny Mao, the Big Boss’s Mainland fixer, is giving in to pressure from nouveau-riche in-laws in Beijing who are insisting on going to the Maldives because it’s the most expensive package available. It’s a 3,200-mile flight to an arid, desolate, flat reef where everything costs five times what it would elsewhere and there’s nothing to do (underplayed possibility of sand-flea bites or skin cancer). At least, I console him, it sounds different.

The heating-up of a certain nearby Comments section raises the question of why some people espouse political opinions that are extreme, offbeat, offensive, inflammatory, irrational or otherwise wacky by community standards.

One obvious reason is to shock, offend or flatter – in other words, to get noticed. I was at a tedious business lunch a few years ago at which the Australian regional manager of a financial services multinational cheerfully told the known pro-Beijing Hong Kong figure sitting opposite that he thought democracy was a load of rubbish and his own country was much the worse for it. I was too polite to ask him what sort of absolute monarchy, Nazi dictatorship, Stalinist totalitarianism or Singaporean auto-gerontocracy he would prefer in Canberra. Rejecting Locke, Madison, Mill and the principle of representative government with disgust because a democratic country has some crime and poverty is illogical; it reminds me of the believers in mysticism (alien-made crop circles, Atlantis, reflexology, etc, etc) for whom the fact that “science doesn’t know everything” is some sort of evidence.

Another reason people voice fringe (or indeed middle-of-the-road) views is as a means of self-identity, like clothing or conspicuous lifestyle choices – like the radical chic mocked by Tom Wolfe. Hating Israel is as symbolically important for some people as opposing abortion is for others. Many people would say that Israeli military action is often excessive, counterproductive, senseless and inhumane. But it is trendy for some to go to the Nth degree: the one country in the Middle East that has democracy, a free press and rule of law should vanish, they insist, and an Arab country without these features (of which there are 19 already*) should take its place. That’s irrational (as is the idea that a constitutional amendment or law against murdering the unborn will prevent women from terminating pregnancies if they want to). It’s an ideological fashion statement.

Finally, there is the possibility that some people actually believe what they are saying. Typically, we are talking about an outsider of some sort who latches on to extreme views in order to feel in-the-know, thus in some way an ‘insider’ and superior to the unquestioning dimwitted masses who swallow the mainstream line. This is the same reason people believe in conspiracy theories (JFK, the Bilderbergers, 9-11, etc), which is what many unorthodox political opinions are. The starting point is to question, not unreasonably, where power lies and to what extent campaign finance, hidden business elites and media manipulation reduce the exercise of the popular vote to a sham. It’s a short slippery slope down to creepy invisible government and The Matrix if you take it too seriously. In a YouTube video I saw, radical journalist John Pilger maintained that Barack Obama is (in essence) just a re-packaged George W Bush clone-puppet, regardless of the ranting anti-Fed Tea Party types out to ‘Impeach the Kenyan’. At one stage, he told his hushed audience of socialist admirers that, after graduating in the 1980s, Obama worked at a particular, obscure company. My ears pricked up: I worked for the same firm, though in a different city. It was, Pilger revealed with a perfectly straight face, a CIA front. I burst out laughing and switched over to an old Absolutely Fabulous episode. Of course, that’s what they want us to do.

*Twenty if you include Palestine.  Lebanon – 40% Christian – arguably manages to be semi-democratic.

Following former Justice Secretary Elsie Leung’s change of understanding about whether the moderate pro-democrats’ proposal on 2012 electoral reform conforms with the Basic Law, Chief Executive Donald Tsang, former legislator Rita Fan and DAB boss Tam Yiu-chung have all come up with such grudging endorsements as ‘worth considering’ and ‘not bad’. Chief Secretary Henry Tang even calls it “courageous and forward-looking”.  One of Beijing’s men in the Big Lychee, Li Gang, now says it looks acceptable. As a panel in the South China Morning Post today shows, all six had in some way previously ruled out changes to the proposed package or directly rejected the pro-democrats’ suggestion:

This impressive bit of United Front formation dancing presages a pronouncement today or tomorrow; officially, the Hong Kong government is studying the idea.

To put things in perspective, the proposal is hardly “rich in democratic elements,” as Sir Bow-Tie claims or a “giant step forward in democratisation,” as legislator and former Security Secretary Regina Ip gushes. Instead of electing five new functional constituency representatives from among their number, the directly elected District Council members will nominate candidates for whom the whole electorate will be able to vote. Assuming officials are not dumb enough to try to blatantly rig the process to overly favour the pro-Beijing camp, the outcome will be pretty much the same as under the original proposal: five legislators from both camps, not tied to commercial interests, will occupy five new functional constituency seats in the Legislative Council, thus diluting the existing corporate representation. Letting everyone vote for the five is largely symbolic. (In theory, it could help the democrats a bit, since, following the 2007 elections, District Council members as a body are more pro-Beijing than the general electorate – it depends on the minutiae of the nomination system).

The real breakthrough is that, although the concession will be presented as a change of mind prompted by local officials and loyalists, it is in fact the Chinese Communist Party that has budged, and said ‘yes’ to an idea presumptuously and impertinently offered by Hong Kong elements hostile to it and claiming majority public support. This is why the pro-Beijing figures (and indeed others) were so confident in dismissing the plan. The only approximate precedent is the removal of failed Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, and then only after a lengthy, face-saving interval after the massive protest of 2003. To push the CCP into submission a second time is a tribute to the stubbornness – however tiresome it seems on occasion – of the pro-democrats as they swore to veto the original package.

The result of such obstinacy – a split in the pro-democracy camp – is overshadowing the CCP-climbdown story.  Purist pro-democrats oppose their moderate colleagues’ proposal because it gives greater legitimacy to the whole institution of functional constituencies and could be used as a precedent for keeping them permanently. And they are right: all the reading-between-the-lines strongly suggests that Hong Kong democracy is destined to be guided via carefully regulated nomination systems to limit, as necessary, the number of undesirables in public office and ensure ultimate CCP control. In a one-party state, that is the most you can expect. Beijing’s concession is to start down that road earlier than planned.

The more radical among the opposition may flatter themselves by imagining that dividing the pro-democrats is the main aim of this compromise. But they are simply not that important; at most, such a split is a bonus for Beijing, and Hong Kong officials, who must have pulled out all the stops in gaining this concession, probably used it as an argument.

The real question, being overlooked among the intra-democrat fisticuffs and name-calling, is why, after what must have been considerable internal wrangling, Beijing officials did the thing they abhor most, and bow to popular sentiment.

The only realistic answer is that, as with Yuan revaluation, it is in their own interests.  We can be certain that plenty of the people they more-or-less trust in Hong Kong have pleaded that the current structure isn’t working. The Chief Executive must have told them; what else could he say at his regular self-criticism sessions with his bosses?  We can be sure that the wretches being considered to succeed him make it clear that they dread the prospect of trying to run a government under this system. Younger pro-Beijing politicians in the DAB, burnishing their party’s electability year by year, want the legitimacy and chance for some power offered by a more representative system rigged in their favour. Only the dinosaur-tycoons arguably have an interest in the status quo, and it is interesting that the local administration has publicly cooled towards bankers and developers recently.

The evidence that freezing political development has failed is overwhelming. The siege of Legco (and subsequently the Liaison Office) by protestors early this year; the shelving of tax, health care and other reforms; the rising public acceptance of radicals like Long Hair and the young post-80s rebels; and all our other favourite examples of poor governance and, crucially, poor governability.  (Some micro-trends are disturbing local officials too, like the high drop-out rate of up-and-coming civil servants – future ministers – worn down by weekly diatribes at the hands of mouth-frothing Legco select committees.) The strategy of stalling reform since 2003 is actually threatening to weaken the CCP’s grip over Hong Kong.  Appearing to bend to the will of the people was a price the central authorities had to pay. We are now heading towards a more superficially representative government with something that looks more like a popular mandate – because it suits Beijing’s purposes.

Although its front page declares Civic Party boss Audrey Eu the winner of last night’s great debate with chief executive Donald Tsang, the Standard refers to her on page 4 as the ‘underdog’. This is the sort of underdog most of us would like to be. Two surveys on who did better gave Audrey 67% and 71% to Donald’s respective 15% and 14%.

Viewers of the clash on PCCW’s now TV were treated to a little gauge across the bottom of the screen showing some sort of real-time approval rating (communist red for him, Taiwan-independence green for her). At first sight, the range of support for Audrey, from the high 70s to the 90s, looked overdone; the broadcaster is, after all, owned by Richard Li, a Civic Party sympathizer. But then, watching the fragrant, pro-democracy barrister stomping on Donald without mercy at times, you wondered how even 8% of the audience could judge the CE to be ahead. Even Donald would have pushed the Audrey button had he been watching at home.

More to the point, the debate – like the government’s other publicity campaigns – seems to have increased rather than reduced opposition to the electoral reform package for 2012. The only hope for a surge in support for the package now lies with Beijing and the rumours that a last-minute concession is on the way. Specifically, the murmuring says, the whole electorate will vote for the five new functional constituency seats for directly elected district council members.

The rumour owes much to former Justice Secretary and hardcore Communist Party loyalist Elsie Leung who changed her understanding about whether this moderate pro-democrats’ proposal is in accord with the Basic Law. At first she says it’s not, then she says it is. This might seem the slightly endearing sort of muddle you find in forgetful schoolmarmish spinsters in their twilight years. But when Elsie changes her understanding it usually means the old girl has had a telephone call.

Those of us who like a dash of Orwell with our congee will never forget how she changed her understanding of what the Basic Law said about the term of office for a chief executive (Donald) who takes over mid-term. At first she said he would have a full five years in office (which the Basic Law indeed said), then she said he wouldn’t (after Beijing produced an ‘interpretation’ of the law giving it a totally different and indeed illogical meaning). As she put it: “Having considered … new arguments and information, I consider that our earlier position was incorrect.  We must therefore admit our mistake and change our view.  To do otherwise would be disrespectful of the rule of law.” Freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.

The idea that the CCP is about to make a concession to Hong Kong’s pro-democrats is too ridiculous for words. The CCP does not do concessions to its own citizens, whose role for 3,000 years has been to tremble and obey. (If it did happen – however trivial or stingy it might seem – it would be unprecedented. It would have to be part of a bigger game plan whereby the Big Lychee would in practice become more tightly managed by Beijing. Even so, Hong Kong’s opposition would be strongly advised to grab it, fall to the ground and grovel in adoring thanks, because otherwise it might be another three millennia before you see it happen again.)

That said, something is afoot when Elsie changes her understanding. Most likely, Beijing early next week will announce a sort of quasi-concession: if the package gets through Legco on Wednesday, we will make a firm commitment to (say) some semi-directly-elected functional constituencies for 2016. The pro-democrats would spit in contempt, and we will draw nearer to the Armageddon Donald warned about last night. The nail-biting tension continues.

Will Donald entertain us with any more acts of public self-flagellation? As a way of convincing us that he is desperate to get the package through, undergoing Death by Audrey on live TV was – if we are to be honest – quite impressive. It would be rather decent of him to submit himself (as did his predecessor, now I think about it) to further highly publicized bouts of human bear-baiting. We need a bit of fun.

With a defiant scowl, the dentist turned his back on the woman, deaf to her piteous pleas for mercy. He took one last look at her before slamming his office door and leaving her alone and helpless in the steaming tropical town. “If you want to see your teeth again,” he snarled, “bring the money, in cash, here.” Meanwhile, far away back in civilization, the woman’s dissolute husband was encountering a trauma of his own after pint seven in the Old China Hand, the dingy Wanchai refuge for the lowest and vilest members of Hong Kong’s most untouchable castes. An enormous black prostitute was propositioning him. “Are you Italian?” she demanded in her thick northern Kenyan brogue. “I like Italian men to climb all over my ass!” And with that, she forced the wastrel to the sticky, foul-smelling floor and squatted on him, her vast torso grinding into his powerless body.

Another day begins in the heart of Asia’s leading international business hub, and I try to digest the ugliness of the story. “So let’s get this straight,” I say to wild American friend Odell as he meekly takes a sip from his rice bran and organic ylang ylang latte in a quiet corner of the IFC Mall of Pacific Coffee. “You want me to lend you a couple of thousand bucks because Mee’s repaired teeth are being held hostage by the dentist in Thailand and you can’t get any money because some giant African hooker bent your ATM card.” A rather mumbling response, including a defensive reference to ‘a partial denture’, grudgingly admits that this is the sad case.

I have the presence of mind to take out my digital camera and demand that he re-state his admission in full on a short YouTube-sized video clip. For future reference, in case of tardy repayment. It would pain me beyond words to see someone having to ransom his wife’s teeth a second time.

“We must focus on the economy” and “We must enhance communication.” These are the two slogans most likely to provoke pangs of nostalgia among Hongkongers who miss the bumbling, crisis-racked, deflationary, pestilential and rebellious time of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, from 1997 to 2005. The first was a plea to stop thinking about political reform. Today, the subject is being forced into our face round the clock by a campaign to produce overwhelming public support for the 2012 electoral package being pushed by the crop-haired one’s successor, Donald Tsang. Which bring us to the second slogan: an implicit assertion that if the people disagree with the administration, it is because they have not understood properly.

The Standard reports that the most widely respected opinion poll in town, and one from a pro-Beijing group, find public opposition to the package actually growing. This follows a barrage of hard-to-avoid poster and TV advertising and embarrassing, high-profile public appearances by top officials at weekends. (Ever on the alert for an irrelevant and pointless discursion at what could be a critical time if they play their cards right, the pro-democrats have switched into full obsessiveness mode over whether these stunts amount to political advertising (bad) rather than announcements in the public interest (good).)

It could be, of course, that the government’s communication strategy prevented an even bigger drop in approval ratings. More probably, though, it contributed to popular skepticism. The desperate tone of the effort invited derision; a straighter appeal for sympathy and help would have been more successful. And then there was the great irony: an administration seeking democratic endorsement for an election system designed to obviate democratic endorsement. People surely felt insulted, not simply by the condescension of T-shirt-clad officials dispensing stickers in malls, but by being exhorted to Act Now in some unspecified way, after 12 years of being told implicitly that their only role is to shut up and behave.

Question 12 of the HKU poll asked respondents who they felt would be to blame if the package fails to get through the Legislative Council tomorrow week. Among the majority who absolve the pro-democrats, the largest group (34% of the total sample) point the finger at the Central People’s Government rather than at Sir Bow-Tie (19%). For good reason: we are in this mess because we are in a one-party state whose leadership can’t relate to a population that talks back. So to a good third of the city, Donald’s hyperactive efforts to promote the package are just the latest and most tragic episode in his post-handover saga of unquestioning obeisance to Beijing and he simply doesn’t rate as an independent player. The funniest part is that many Communist loyalists in the Big Lychee still despise him as a running dog of the British.

The great debate with fragrant Civic Party boss Audrey Eu on Thursday evening offers him a last chance, barring a barely imaginable concession by Beijing, to finally honour poor old Tofu-for-Brains’s constant pledges to enhance communication.  But it would take unprecedented honesty: an implicit admission that up to now he has been speaking bullshit, and now he will cut it out and level with us. Instead, we can expect a mind-numbing bore-fest as the two recite well-rehearsed arguments at each other over the precise meaningfulness of arcane tweaks to functional constituencies or the Election Committee, interspersed with vapid slogans about moving forward and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, while viewers at home pass out and accidentally sleep through Argentina vs South Korea. And the package will fail in Legco six days later while outside cops pepper-spray Post-80s Kids Against Unrighteous Authority, and we enter the next stage of even-lamer-than-before-duck government. For pitifulness, Tung was a hard act to beat, but Donald has rolled up his sleeves and is going to give it all he’s got.