Professor Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, a peace broker at breaking point
As referee in the pan-democrat camp, Joseph Cheng may find consensus on a joint proposal for electoral reform beyond even his powers
As the links between the moderates and radicals of the pan-democratic camp are stretched to breaking point over the issue of universal suffrage, Professor Joseph Cheng Yu-shek is standing bravely in their midst, trying to hold the two allies together.
The Alliance for True Democracy convenor said it looked like his final duty as arbitrator for pan-democrats for more than a decade - and he would not give up. "This is probably my last role as a convenor for the pan-democratic camp. I am, after all, 64 and about to retire," said Cheng, a political scientist at City University.
But hopes of a happy ending in this last chapter of his battle for consensus in the pan-democratic camp and 20 years of endeavours in democratisation could be misplaced.
Wednesday saw the Alliance, which is made up of 26 of the 27 pan-democratic lawmakers, unveil its proposal for electoral reform in the 2017 chief executive election - a proposal hammered out in various meetings and assumed to have been agreed upon.
It suggested a three-track system in which candidates could be chosen by public nomination or through support from political parties.
Those choices would then be rubber-stamped by the nominating committee, the group responsible under the Basic Law for officially nominating candidates.
However, a row immediately erupted between the moderate Democratic Party and the radical People Power over whether all the "tracks" were indispensable.