Students should leave Hong Kong University affairs to its council
The generals fired the first salvos. The foot soldiers moved in on Tuesday night. Audrey Eu Yuet-mee and Alan Leong Kah-kit were among pan-democratic leaders who joined a signature campaign against the delayed appointment of former law dean Johannes Chan Man-mun as pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong.
On Tuesday night, student protesters stormed a meeting of the university's governing council on the matter. Chaos followed; one professor - Lo Chung-mau - was sent to hospital.
The row yesterday wasn't about whether Chan was fit for the job, or whether the administration of Leung Chun-ying was trying to manipulate the outcome through council member Arthur Li Kwok-cheung, a former education minister. It was over whether the unfortunate don was hurt by protesters or feigned his injury.
A storm in a teacup over a politically neutral post - with such exciting duties as budgeting research and hiring academic staff - has turned into a farce.
Once you have the rival pan-democratic and leftist camps locking horns, facts and other relevant issues are out the window. It's now a shouting match. The pan-dems and the students want Chan in and Li out. The leftists such as Beijing mouthpieces and want it the other way. Some students and university staff are planning a vote of no confidence in Li. Both sides accuse the other of interference.
Such are the students who hounded their former vice-chancellor Tsui Lap-chee until he left without seeking another term because of his oversight over security arrangements during a state leader's visit to campus.
Interesting priorities: they had no qualms getting rid of one of the world's great geneticists, but fight over a relatively minor appointment for a local legal scholar whose work and administrative skills are, to say the least, not universally admired.
Let me make a novel suggestion. Have a look at the council members' list. Li notwithstanding, you have members who are student leaders and staff reps as well as independent professors, a top journalist and business figures who may be from the establishment but are hardly pro-Leung.
Let them sort it out. It's their job, not yours.