David won against Goliath. And the little Dutch kid overcame disaster by sticking his finger in the dyke. But Hong Kong’s pro-democracy lawmakers will not succeed in preventing pro-Beijing forces from rewriting the Legislative Council’s rules to reduce the impact of such delaying tactics as filibusters.
Some brief background… LegCo is a relatively weak body to start with. Although they represent the majority of voters, pan-dem members are outnumbered because of the rigged composition of the chamber. To compensate, they became adept at using delaying tactics to disrupt things like government spending approvals. However, by bundling popular measures with the usual garbage ones, the government has been able to portray pan-dems’ obstructiveness as chaotic and damaging to the public interest. This has lost them public sympathy.
The pan-dems are now bogged down in predictable embarrassing protests and whining about the details. The government is pretending it’s an internal matter for the legislative branch.
The pan-dems in LegCo are mostly of the mainstream/older-generation who are obsessed with procedures and structures, and trapped in the dream that constitutional wrangling can lead to democracy in Hong Kong.
There were more of the younger, radical pan-dems in LegCo, but they have been disqualified or even imprisoned, and some may also be bankrupted. The proposed procedural changes are simply part of this bigger pattern – the Chinese Communist Party has decided that the Hong Kong Legislative Council is to become a ceremonial, rubber-stamp body like a People’s Congress on the Mainland.
This is not up for negotiation. Yet the old mainstream pan-dems still have not realized the post-2014 reality: you cannot use Hong Kong’s de-facto Leninist-style constitution against itself.
A charming but sad example is the pro-dems’ warning that the LegCo procedural changes will ‘pave the way’ for the passing of Article 23 national security laws. The days when the Communists thought LegCo was necessary for that are over. The law (as with oath-taking) will be whatever they say it is.
Hong Kong’s opposition – liberate your minds and stop thinking LegCo is real.
Wouldn’t it be nice if ALL the Pan Dems (or anyone with an iota of self respect) just walked out in unison and QUIT, stating “What’s the point of this charade/political theater anymore?”
At least the remaining, going-through-the-motions, “establishment” hacks would be finally exposed for the do-nothing, useless, boot lickers that they are.
Most HKers are pretty ambivalent anyway…they deserve to be finally swallowed up and handed unrepresentative government.
You always see things in term of decline but in fact the process of Hong Kong post 1997 has been one of
FRUITION.
All through the colonial era, the seed pods of the China Way were there and waiting to be revived and incubated.
Chaos, corruption, waste, gangs, small- mindedness, greed…it was all there all along.
And the Chinese love it.
Let them get on with it.
31 August 2014. A day that should live in infamy.
Those older generation long-serving Democrats in LegCo may be ineffective, or even useless, but they make quite a nice living from LegCo while doing not an awful lot.
I’ve been to legco many times and the only time pro govt legislators are there and not asleep or browsing the internet is when: (1) the govt needs their votes on something; (2) it’s a “love the motherland” chance to show their patriotism; or (3) its to protect their own functional constituency voters snouts being pushed out of the relevant trough.
More to the point, the salaries and expense accounts for many pan-Dems at LEGCO (Demosisto, Fernando Cheung, Long Hair, Chu Hoi-Dick) are the main source of funds for their respective parties and social movements. It’s probably this, more than the vote majority issue, that made Beijing so keen on DQ-ing.