When something is given the wrong name, things can get messy. And so it is with the League of Social Democrats' and Civic Party's by-election-cum-referendum ploy. First came the government's insistence that it is a by-election, and no more, which seems pretty accurate. Then, following the warning against the 'referendum' bid by the State Council's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, we hear from a Hong Kong Standing Committee member of the National People's Congress that it 'looks like a referendum, smells like a referendum'.
Then a by-election campaign slogan called for an 'uprising' against an unjust political system, and opponents promptly jumped on this, using it as a reason to boycott a by-election that is not a referendum - unless we use our visual and olfactory senses. And in the midst of this collective cognitive paralysis in political terminology, it has also been called the 'Hong Kong Tea Party' in an Asian Wall Street Journal editorial.
It is unclear whether the paper was trying to draw a parallel with the Tea Party movement (2009) in the US or the iconic Boston Tea Party (1773), of which the current Tea Party movement makes reference - or both. Given that we have been unable to find agreement on what it is, even using all our senses, we ought to at least see if the answer lies in the 'tea party' analogy.
The tea party protests that swept across the US last year are against many things, including big government, the Obama administration's economic stimulus packages, health care reform and increases in the national debt and taxes. In what The Economist called 'America's most vibrant political force at the moment', the anti-tax Tea-Party movement has been credited for the upset in the recent Massachusetts Senate by-election (yes, a by-election) held to fill the late Ted Kennedy's seat.
Since the issue in Hong Kong is not about government or stimulus packages, and since we are looking at more handouts in the upcoming budget, it is hard to see how the modern Tea Party movement relates to our democratic development.
If use of the term 'uprising' has rubbed Beijing up the wrong way, then we face an even bigger problem if the paper was attempting to allude to the Boston Tea Party, which ignited events leading to American independence. Any more talk of 'revolution' or 'independence' will fray Beijing's nerves even further.