Public Eye
Voters say it loudly
In case you're still scratching your head, here's an idiot's guide to what voters were saying in Sunday's elections: 'Don't mess with us.' Banana-throwers in Legco were voted out. So, too, were those who act like thugs. Softies who sympathise with foreign maids seeking citizenship were voted out. So were those who tried to thwart the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge on pollution grounds. Voters even punished the Democratic Party, whose only crime was a loose association with these people. Pro-establishment groups won big. Pro-democracy groups lost big. The democracy war cry no longer guarantees victory. Those who forced a by-election to double as a democracy referendum were humiliated in the polls. Voters like democracy, clean air and so on. But they don't like political games. They can flip a coin and decide: 'Heads we win, tails you lose.' That was Sunday's message.
A guide to New Territories life
Let's get this straight so even idiots can understand. If you are male, 18 years and above, and a New Territories native, you get free government land for a three-storey house. No confusion there. Female NT natives and all other Hong Kong people are not eligible. This preposterous policy has so far benefited more than 30,000 so-called male indigenous rural descendents. But most don't live in their supposed village houses to keep ancestral ties alive. They rent them out for big bucks. Still following? Normal people would be grateful for this largesse. But the NT villagers are not normal people. They behave like thugs. Back in 1994, when then-legislator Christine Loh Kung-wai said female villagers should also get free land, some of these thugs threatened to rape her. The powerful rural body that represents them, the Heung Yee Kuk, demands ever more privileges for the villagers. They want bigger houses, quicker free land grants and the government to turn a blind eye to illegal structures. OK, so there's something you don't understand: why is all this nonsense tolerated? That's simple. Our gutless government fears the Heung Yee Kuk. Its don is Lau Wong-fat, who has the ear of Beijing and is a member of Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's cabinet. It now transpires that the greedy villagers have teamed up with Hong Kong's equally greedy developers to operate a scam that borders on criminality. The villagers have been selling the development rights of their free land to developers for big bucks or a free flat. The developers have been using these rights to bypass normal building procedures to build pricey villas for sale. For years the villagers have suckered the people. For years the developers have suckered the people. Now they have teamed up to jointly sucker the people. Development secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor talks tough about reining in the villagers but that's all it is - talk and no action. And there's nothing you can do about it. Follow?
Where's the outrage?
Here's something Public Eye can't follow: why are people not outraged by the in-your-face sexist and discriminatory nature of the village house policy? Political parties protest against abode rights for foreign maids, unaffordable homes and even silly things such as Stephen Lam Sui-lung becoming chief secretary. But they tolerate NT villagers fattening their pockets at the people's expense. Are they taking a cue from our wimpy officials? Is that why they prefer to go after foreign maids instead? Overpaid officials the likes of Carrie Lam must be thanking their lucky stars for the free ride.
Why the outrage?
And another thing: why the outrage over US President Barack Obama being portrayed as a Halloween zombie with a bullet hole in his head? The image, e-mailed to drum up Republican support, drew widespread condemnation from critics who described it as disgusting and violent. But if Public Eye remembers correctly, an image portraying the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist with a grenade in his turban that outraged Muslims was described as free speech. We just don't follow.