Shark attack
For a chief executive election widely expected to be a non-event, the past two weeks have certainly put us through disorienting political vertigo. But for all the dramatic back-stabbing since the Ides of February, along with the campaign mud-slinging, scandal frenzy, and the psycho-drama of a possible fourth or fifth contender, we find ourselves back at square one.
In an anticlimax, we now have the original three candidates - two who are 'acceptable' to Beijing and one who is running merely to highlight the 'small-circle election'.
So, have we come full circle? Do we now expect the people to twiddle their thumbs until they hear the election results on the evening news on the 25th? Or do we now have more to think about, regardless of what the result may be?
Lots of theories are circulating about whether Beijing plans to stick to 'Plan A' and elect Henry Tang Ying-yen, or if it will 'guide' Election Committee members to make sure Leung Chun-ying wins. For all the hype over an actual 'contest', to know that Beijing is still controlling the result really makes a mockery of the entire electoral process.
Given all the talk about Hong Kong not being ready for universal suffrage, one wonders whether it is Beijing that is not ready. By 2017, there can be no Plan A or B; everyone, including Beijing, will have to go on the roller-coaster ride otherwise known as election campaigns, and live with the result.
What has transpired in Hong Kong politics over the past month reminds me of what former British member of parliament Alan Clark said about 'friends' in politics: there are none. Politicians are 'all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water'. It sounds a bit cynical but Clark may be right after all.
'Sharks' are very much part of any political ecology. The problem is that they've not been allowed to be part of the one here that Beijing feels a need to control.
By disallowing sharks, Beijing may have been able to keep the possible election scenarios down to the two it has prepared itself for, but it robs itself of credibility. This is because keeping sharks disenfranchised only makes the case for them stronger - after all, they are part of a healthy political ecology because they offer voters choice.
When the political opportunities present themselves, a few sharks ready, circling and waiting will widen the field when no choice seemed possible. Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee had the ambition, picked the right moment to enter the race but was systematically kept out of the game. Legislative Council president Tsang Yok-sing wasn't enough of a 'shark' - he just wasn't prepared to take the plunge, especially with political operatives in the party he founded aggressively campaigning against his candidacy.
I'm a realist, and have long accepted that there is no way of cutting Beijing out of our political process. But Beijing should beware the Ides of March - the day Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by his friends in collaboration with other senators. The killing frenzy got so violent that the conspirators ended up stabbing one another, too.
Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA
