C.Y. must learn to pick his battles
Mike Rowse suggests some poker-table wisdom is useful for governance
I hope Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying is a good poker player. If he is not, he has only three weeks left in which to practise.
On September 9, our city goes to the polls to elect a new Legislative Council.
Of the 70 Legco members who will be returned, 35 will have been elected by universal suffrage in geographical constituencies, 30 will have been elected through "rotten borough" functional constituencies, and the balance will be district councillors returned via the "super seats" in a more or less democratic manner.
There will inevitably be a lot of scrutiny of the results by academics, political commentators and the media, as well as the public at large.
The composition will be broken down in a number of ways - new members versus incumbents returned, men versus women, propensity to support or oppose democratic reform, and so on.
But in terms of governing our city successfully over the next four years, the key breakdown will be between the following broad factions: generally pro-establishment, supporters of C.Y. Leung; generally pro-establishment, non-supporters of Leung; pan-democrats generally critical of the establishment, but open to reason selectively; and an anti-establishment fringe.