Short-term political expediency poses a very real danger to Hong Kong's freedoms and rule of law. Yet, as the Legislative Council by-elections draw close, the government and its allies are conjuring a small storm of measures that will both undermine Hong Kong's practice of free and fair elections and challenge a fundamental principle underpinning the legal system.
Those who oppose the by-elections - which participants from the democrat camp are describing as a referendum on democracy - had the option of making their opposition highly effective in the best traditions of Hong Kong's electoral system. They could have stood against those advocating universal suffrage and, by perfectly legitimate means, may well have won some or all of these by-elections. They were held back on orders from Beijing, where Hong Kong's way of doing things remains something of a mystery.
Instead, the anti-democrats are trying to block funding for the polls and reduce the number of polling stations, to make it hard for people to participate. So far, so bad. Even worse is the extreme reluctance of government leaders to exercise their right to vote - relinquishing a leadership role in a process that many regard as vital in preserving Hong Kong's limited but important electoral freedoms.
Were all this not bad enough, suggestions are being entertained that the legal system should be undermined by declaring illegal that which is not specifically stated to be legal. In short, the by-elections should be outlawed precisely because the law is silent on their legality. The rule of law is thus reduced to the rule of expediency, and much flows from there - none of it good.
Hong Kong's electoral system has worked because it remains strictly governed by laws that provide a degree of consistency to the process. Once this edifice is tampered with, in the short-term interests of thwarting the referendum campaign, the damage will probably be irreparable.
All this gives us a very worrying insight into the minds of those who are increasingly demonstrating their lack of respect for laws that don't suit them and have no compunction about arbitrarily changing the system for their convenience.