Wrong side of the street
Anyone who has bought fireworks will be aware of the warning instruction that reads: 'Light fuse and stand back.' This is sound advice, of a kind that should have been followed by the novice politician-civil servants who decided to embark on street politics in recent weeks. After lighting the campaigning fuse, they hovered around as it fizzled and burst, not knowing how or when to step back, forwards or even sideways.
In many ways, it is admirable to see the chief executive and his acolytes step out of their offices and face the public in the manner of political leaders the world over who have to get out and campaign for their ideas and policies. But here's the rub: when elected political leaders campaign, they are looking for a mandate to govern and they fully expect to be held to account if their pledges are not fulfilled.
When Donald Tsang Yam-kuen hits the streets, albeit behind a phalanx of guards, he is behaving as though the people have elected him and thus raised expectations of accountability and, indeed, of democracy, which he has not the slightest intention of fulfilling. It should be noted that even the democrats are not pressing for an elected government, merely an elected chief executive and legislature; quite a different thing.
So, in a sense, Tsang is running ahead of his critics while simultaneously running behind them. This contortion is not, of course, sustainable and that is why this street campaign in support of the government's constitutional reform proposal is so bizarre. It may even be described as a textbook primer in how not to conduct a political campaign. Even the dimmest political operative knows that there is a limit to rhetoric over reality, so why is the government asking the people to support the cause of their disenfranchisement and to back reforms in the legislature when they know full well that they have no vote?
Having decided to behave in the manner of normal politicians, the officials, in their newly printed T-shirts and bold badges, start whining when faced with vocal opposition. They mobilised their acolytes to protest against teachers who questioned these officials when they took their message to what they assumed would be a tame audience in schools. When shouted down on the streets, they complained about inadequate equipment. And so the moaning goes on.
Then there is the matter of how they go about campaigning. Faced with cries of protest, the officials have not even bothered to devise a response. They merely chant, 'act now, act now', as if the words themselves would dispel the criticism. So far, so bad, or maybe so far, so farcical.
There is the problem of overkill. More is not necessarily better in political campaigns, especially when the contest is seen as uneven and therefore unfair. The government has plunged into the public coffers to finance a blitz of newspaper advertisements and posters in every corner of Hong Kong, and has filled the airways with strange 'announcements of public interest'.
If the aim is to overcome opposition by smothering it, the result is likely to be the reverse. Hong Kong's smart people are quite capable of seeing what's going on and won't be happy to discover that their hard-earned money is being spent on something which, incidentally, is not public policy, as the government argues, because it has not been approved by the legislature.
The newly hatched politicians, abruptly emerging from their civil-service cocoon, are new to campaigning whereas a remarkably large number of Hong Kong people are very familiar with political campaigns of all kinds.
Indeed, what is remarkable about Hong Kong is the extraordinarily high level of public participation in politics. And it's not new: more than two decades ago, almost one-fifth of the population signed a petition protesting against the construction of the Daya Bay nuclear plant. Shortly afterwards, over a million people poured onto the streets in a resolutely peaceful manner to protest against the Tiananmen Square massacre. And every year since, they have gathered in large numbers to remember and support the cause of democracy in China.
These actions might be described as big-stage politics, but the meticulous tracking work of the Hong Kong Transition Project shows how, in a myriad of other ways, local people participate in politics by smaller acts. These include giving money to political causes, taking part in neighbourhood civic action, signing petitions and participating in radio phone-ins, and writing to officials.
In other words, the idea - so fondly repeated by the bureaucrats - of Hong Kong's political immaturity is a fallacy. Now that they have finally got out of their offices, they are discovering what that means.
Stephen Vines is a Hong Kong-based journalist and entrepreneur
