Hong Kong's guileless democrats outgunned

The anti-democrats have suddenly discovered that democracy has its uses. Having roundly condemned the democrats for insisting on giving the public a choice in the selection of chief executive candidates and said that a referendum on the proposed constitutional reforms is a waste of time and money, they are now planning a referendum of their own by way of a signature campaign.

They want people to sign up in support of Beijing's reform plans and use this campaign as a tool to force pro-democracy legislators to vote for the reforms later in the year. Pointedly, there is no suggestion that anti-democrat legislators should be persuaded to vote against the plans if the majority of people believe that they are deeply flawed.

Yet again when it comes to propaganda and tactics, the anti-democrats have demonstrated their considerable guile. Indeed, they have even managed to persuade a great many people that black is white by painting the democrats as being responsible for blocking the progress of universal suffrage, should they decline to support a plan that confines universal suffrage to voting for candidates who enjoy the mandate of heaven as delivered by the Chinese Communist Party.

In the face of this propaganda onslaught, the democrats are behaving like rabbits trapped in car headlights and seem to believe that they do not need to deploy any degree of guile in countering the anti-democrats. Instead, they stick to a line that may well be honourable but is looking increasingly tattered, as even the government seems to have learned better ways of manipulating public opinion.

For at least three decades, it has been very clear that the overwhelming majority of Hong Kong people yearn for genuine democracy as opposed to the North Korean-version of voting that is now on offer. Remarkably, this strong hand for the democrats is being delivered with a limp wrist.

Take, for example, the current proposal for a signature campaign; why on earth do the democrats not challenge the anti-democrats to turn this into a genuine opinion-gathering exercise presenting the case for and against the reforms? And they could go further by pledging to respect the public's majority view when it comes to the Legislative Council vote, with the important caveat that the anti-democrats should also pledge to follow majority views.