NOT unreasonably, millionaire and former Executive Councillor Mr Allen Lee Peng-fei, 52, is feeling aggrieved. Not bothered, mind you. He's been around too long for that. Just misunderstood.
Why? Mr Lee, a mathematician by education and a self-made man in business, is growing weary of people telling him he could not lead a horse to water, let alone persuade Hongkong voters to elect him to the Legislative Council.
This irks him. He believes that his proposed Liberal Party could become the voice for the silent majority of Hongkong who feel that the only way to ensure their future is to accept that a greater democracy is unacceptable to Beijing, and to get on with projects that will secure Hongkong as a prosperous Special Administrative Region after the transition in 1997.
With this in mind, he hopes to have his Liberal Party officially launched by June and to announce his intention to contest a directly-elected Legco seat in the 1995 elections.
He understands the scepticism which some of his rivals - and his supporters - have about his chances of achieving these goals. The conservatives were decimated in the 1991 maiden direct elections. Seventeen of the 18 non-appointed legislators are small ''l'' liberals or pro-democracy independents; the 18th, Mr Andrew Wong Wang-fat, is a fence-sitter. As far as the voting public was concerned, no conservative was worth elected office in Legco.
By default, the loose coalition of conservative Centre for Co-operative Resources legislators has undergone a policy U-turn. With the arrival of Mr Chris Patten last July, pro-democracy politicians have become the new allies of Government House and the conservatives have lost their Upper Albert Road power base.