Albert Ho's brilliant but cynical strategy for Hong Kong resignation
You have to give it to Albert Ho Chun-yan for being ever ready to recycle tried and tested political strategies.
You have to give it to Albert Ho Chun-yan for being ever ready to recycle tried and tested political strategies. The Democrat lawmaker last week threatened to resign his Legislative Council super seat to trigger another so-called referendum on democracy.
Critics have said the plan won't work. It actually doesn't even make sense. But that's beside the point. Even Ho himself admits any such action has little hope of pressuring Beijing to compromise on political reform. So what is he really thinking?
As a piece of political theatre, it has proved to be masterful. At the start of the year, the government had regained some political momentum. The end of the Occupy movement has convinced more people to accept Beijing's reform guidelines. Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was pushing the reform package hard. Her minions were busy feeding off-the-record tips to news hacks about what marvellous plans our chief executive had in store for us with his policy address today.
Then late last week, Ho lobbed a political grenade.
The idea of another round of pan-democrat resignations in the legislature - similar to what happened five years ago - was actually first proposed by student activists during the Occupy protests. But Ho and others ignored it back then.
He has now managed to resurrect it, steal the limelight and get people to ignore the government's messages.
As it is, his whole plan is actually incoherent. It would at least make more sense to do it before Legco's final vote on the political reform package as the by-election so triggered could be considered a vote on whether the public wants a veto on the Beijing-sanctioned reform plan.
But Ho doesn't want to risk not being voted back in and therefore lose his super seat to a pro-establishment figure. Such an outcome would obviously give a crucial vote to the government in Legco over political reform.
Meanwhile, will he or won't he? That question will dominate political discourse as we try to read Ho's mind for the next six months, just like Occupy activist Benny Tai Yiu-ting got the public's attention for over a year before the mass protests started.
As a cynical strategy, Ho's is absolutely brilliant.
