At last, democracy cycles into view
Universal suffrage has finally featured in Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's carefully thought out campaign tool - the planning cycle - which he has used to impress the public with his problem-solving skills.
But the latest phase of the cycle does not go any further than action the chief executive has already undertaken to carry out on the democracy front in the city.
'It's easy to come up with a slogan to please everyone,' he writes in Chinese on adverts featured in newspapers.
But it takes more than appealing slogans to turn proposals into reality, he said, referring to the need for a consensus among the public, Legco and Beijing.
In the fifth and final campaign advertising series, Mr Tsang laments that Hong Kong's democracy has been marking time since his reform package was voted down in late 2005.
'Dual universal suffrage is as much the wish of many people as mine. It's on my mind every day,' he says.
He says he will deliver mainstream proposals and other views to Beijing after a consultation in the middle of this year.
The date on the graphic suggests Mr Tsang first tackled universal suffrage in late November, followed by other issues like poverty, health-care financing, conservation and public finance.
It's anybody guess whether this was a deliberate attempt to save the political hot potato until the end. But the response from Mr Tsang's campaign office was 'there is no particular reason why'.
Mr Tsang's campaign aide also dismissed suggestions that the leader's previous advertisements, featuring more than 300 tiny Chinese characters in the chief executive's handwriting and on display in MTR stations, did not have any public appeal.
'We have received considerable feedback from people via the campaign website, also in the form of the planning cycle,' she said.
She conceded that while commuters might only read bits and pieces when they passed by the ads, 'every little helps'. 'We think we have served our purpose in explaining the way we tackle the issues,' she said.
