In case last Sunday's disgraceful scenes during Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's town hall-style forum in Tin Shui Wai didn't quite disgust you enough, here's a recap: Leung's supporters and opponents punched, kicked and hurled obscenities at each other. An 11-year old boy was among those struck. One man shoved another and pulled his hair. A leader of a radical political party threw a folding chair at Leung's car. Police ended up arresting five people. And we have the gall to call ourselves a civilised society that can discuss political issues civilly. We are nothing of the sort. What we saw last Sunday was pure thuggery. Brawls between rival political groups and with police are no longer an aberration in our democracy debate. It is the norm. The debate is no longer being defined by rational discussion. It is being defined by foul-mouthed hooligans out to make trouble. You may hate what others have to say, but doesn't democracy preach that you must still defend their right to say it? If those who participate in our political debate continue in the way they conducted themselves last Sunday, they may yet prove Jackie Chan right; that Chinese societies like ours aren't culturally cut out to handle democracy. Maybe what Hong Kong needs now is a heavy dose of North Korea to scare us back to sanity.
Have we all lost our marbles? We're now allowing scary and highly sensitive historical terms such as "cultural revolution" and "white terror" to enter the vocabulary of our democracy debate. Sunday's brawl was a shameful blot in the latest chapter of our directionless politics. But cultural revolution and white terror? How totally inane. Yet that's what pan-democrats are accusing C.Y. Leung of spreading. For starters, China's modern-day leaders have already confined the Cultural Revolution to the wrong side of history. And do our politicians even understand the historical meaning of white terror? To think that white terror or cultural revolution tactics could gain a foothold in Hong Kong's free and transparent society is downright loopy.
