Almost two months have passed since the government's political reform package was voted down in the Legislative Council. Since then, both Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and his cabinet officials have said the government will now concentrate on economic and social affairs, and that a new package on political reform will not be submitted within Mr Tsang's current term of office.
The Commission on Strategic Development's main role this year is, sadly, confined to studying the principles and concepts of universal suffrage. It goes without saying that discussion of Hong Kong's political reform blueprint has, in effect, come to a standstill apart from academic discussion of new political coinage among commission members.
This is a cause for concern because the stagnant situation, if left unchecked, may easily turn into a time bomb with an unexpected outcome created by potential mass grievances. The historic landslide victory of Hamas, an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, in the Palestinian legislative election last month is a vivid and extreme example of the volatility of the choices of voters who have, for decades, been denied fair, impartial and clean elections.
In what was widely described as 'the most democratic election process that has ever happened in the Middle East', Hamas gained a parliamentary majority by having garnered 42.9 per cent of the vote to secure 74 out of 132 seats.
It left one pondering why a group, which is branded a terrorist organisation by Israel, Australia, Canada, the United States and the European Union, could win the hearts of so many voters and even get an absolute majority in the Palestinian parliament.
The lesson for Hong Kong from the 'unexpected' rise of Hamas is not that democracy is an untrustworthy ally. The lesson is that voters, who have been subject to decades of aggression, and even occupation, could turn into an extreme faction in a bid to vent deep-seated but long-suppressed despair, discontent and frustration towards a corrupt and autocratic government.