It's hard to wrap our heads around the political hysteria that seems to be taking over this city. It's also hard to understand how we've come to this. Blaming the upcoming Legislative Council election can only go so far.
Take the most recent scandal to hit a high-ranking official. This time, it concerns former legislator and new secretary for development - Hong Kong's second in the month since the new administration has taken over - Paul Chan Mo-po. News of his wife's illegally subdivided properties isn't going down very well with the public. Should he have known that it would cause a ruckus? Absolutely. Having been a legislator himself, he should have had more political sensitivity.
After all, he was in the chamber last year when former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen had to deal with the political havoc caused by his glass-enclosed balcony. And for someone who was so involved in the current chief executive's campaign for the city's top seat, Chan should have known that anything related to meddling with living space - enlarging it or subdividing it - would spell political disaster.
It's not just living space that Hongkongers are hypersensitive about. We are also hypersensitive about our identity. Whether over 30,000 or 90,000 people took to the streets to protest against the introduction of national education does not change the fact that if the government does not do something soon, Hong Kong may implode in this political pressure cooker.
There is nothing wrong with national or civic education, but if the idea of it causes that much angst, here and now, then just scrap it. It makes no political sense to sit on it longer than the government already has.
The point certainly is not to argue over whether the accusation - that national education is brainwashing - is fair. Perhaps it isn't. Besides, if we feel that our children can be brainwashed so easily, what does it say about how we view our children? Do we think they are incapable of thinking for themselves?