The Senior Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, has enthusiastically advised Tung Chee-hwa about how to rule Hong Kong and how to deal with the Chinese Government after the sovereignty handover (South China Morning Post, May 13 and 17).
The political reforms introduced by Governor Chris Patten were harshly criticised by Mr Lee.
He commented that they were 'too much, too late'.
I was puzzled why Mr Lee said Hong Kong people were enjoying 'too much' in the way of political rights. The colonial governor was appointed by London and only 20 out of 60 seats of the legislature were directly elected by universal suffrage.
In other words, there are still restrictions in terms of democracy.
Compare this to Singapore, where the people can choose their president and parliament by election. Some people, including Mr Lee, may argue that Hong Kong is not an independent state, so it should not have such rights to elect its chief executive and legislature. However, why should we not be allowed to do so? Even in some villages in mainland China, the leader of the community is picked through 'one person one vote' election by the whole village.
I do agree that London acted too late. In 1948, before its independence, there were already multi-party elections in Singapore. Our first taste of elections, albeit indirect ones, was in the 1980s.