After days of apparent indecision, Tsang Yok-sing - Legislative Council president and a Beijing loyalist - finally said yesterday he would not run for chief executive of Hong Kong.
The outcome of all that wavering could not have pleased Beijing more. Tsang's step back from the brink not only allows Beijing to secure its desired 'two-horse' race, but also avoids a possible abortive election, as well as maintaining the primacy of executive-led governance in Hong Kong.
'I don't have enough time to work on a substantial platform,' said Tsang, well aware that the nomination period for the city's top job ends tomorrow. 'Neither do I have enough time to let the public get to know me better and give me a fair evaluation.'
He added that joining the race might trigger concern about party politics - which is supposed to be absent from the chief executive race - and could affect prospects for the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) in the September Legislative Council elections. Tsang is the honorary chairman of the DAB.
Now Tsang will return to his powerful position as president of Legco, and Beijing can have a moment's respite from what has become a vicious mud-slinging, not to say muckraking, campaign.
From the central government's point of view, the race was spinning out of control with too many candidates. Now it can return to what Beijing initially wanted - essentially a two-horse race between former chief secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen and former Executive Council convenor Leung Chun-ying, even though both are still mired in scandal. This reversal from chaos to some sort of order brings to mind the Chinese saying that 'things revert back to their opposite when they reach the extreme'.
With the recent scandals involving Tang, Leung and Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, lawmakers have become emboldened, repeatedly threatening to invoke their privilege power for full explanations from all three.