The next chief executive election is still nearly two years away but, already, speculation is mounting about who the leading candidates will be on both sides of the political spectrum.
This in turn raises the fascinating question as to how the two camps will go about selecting their preferred candidate, or indeed whether they have even started to think through the problem.
Let's start with the members of the pan-democratic camp. They are going to struggle to collect the 150 nominations needed to field a single candidate. If the various factions co-operate, it should just be possible, as was shown in 2007 when Alan Leong Kah-kit secured the 100 signatures necessary to enter that contest. If they don't co-operate - that is, if the Democratic Party and the Civic Party fail to put recent disputes behind them - they won't be able to secure enough nominations for even one name to go forward.
Let us say, just for the sake of argument, that the two strongest claims to leadership come from Audrey Eu Yuet-mee - who thrashed the incumbent chief executive, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, in a recent live television debate - and Democrats chairman Albert Ho Chun-yan, who has made himself almost unique among local politicians (and that includes most ministers) by actually achieving something. Egos will come into this, which always complicates matters, but if an amicable agreement cannot be reached then the camp could fall back on a device implied by its name: members could decide democratically which candidate to throw their combined weight behind by organising some sort of primary election. How this could work, including questions about who would be eligible to vote, would be difficult to work out, but the problems are not insurmountable.
It is when we turn to look at what might loosely be called the 'pro-government' camp that the fun really begins. The first problem is that there are so many names being floated and none at present seems to have the unambiguous backing of Beijing.
At various times, as many as seven names have been suggested as possible candidates. Should they all run, with the lowest vote-getter dropping out each round, until there are only two left standing? Or should the top two go straight into the final clash?