It's pantomime season, so Wednesday's session at Legco struck the right note, particularly the DAB's 'U-turn of the millennium' as it is being called. No wonder party leader Tsang Yok-sing rambled on incoherently trying to justify his party's behaviour. How could he possibly make sense explaining a performance like that? He seemed to think the movie The Bridge On The River Kwai somehow justified his party's cop-out on the second reading of the Municipal Councils bill, explaining how the British commander in the film refused to blow up the bridge his soldiers had built but he was shot and fell on to the detonator as he died, destroying said bridge. Quite how that related to the situation in Legco nobody but him seemed to know.
But it prompted Democrat Yeung Sum to jump up and say that he also remembered the film and its basic message was about the dignity of the British soldiers whereas the DAB had lost all dignity by trying to use it as an excuse for a U-turn. He then denounced Mr Tsang for talking 'pure rubbish'.
Since councillors are not allowed to use Legco to make personal attacks (a rule President Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai often invokes) the DAB promptly complained. Mrs Fan studied a re-run of the tape, but came back to rule Mr Yeung was referring to what Mr Tsang had said and not to Mr Tsang himself . . . in other words, you can't call another legislator a load of rubbish but you can say that what he says is a load of rubbish.
Perhaps the Kwai analogy was not so far off the point. After all, the DAB won in the District Council elections by bridge building in the constituencies. Don't look now, Mr Tsang, but we think you've just fallen on a detonator.
On the other hand, it was the rival party that Mr Tsang's party claimed to be supporting. Democrats' top aides had worked through the night to meet the deadline to add amendments to the bill. Their good friends the DAB didn't want all that work to go to waste. Democrats, on the other hand, thought it would have been time well spent if the bill was defeated.
Meanwhile, fresh from last week's hit performance in the chamber by the David Lan Hong-tsung chorus line - when none of the glittering array of policy secretaries he brought along to help out seemed to know who should answer legislators' questions - the Secretary for Home Affairs was back on stage, with the gallant band feverishly doing the soft-shoe shuffle on questions about credit card fraud. Mr Lan was able to answer the DAB's Lau Kong-wah, but the follow-up query floored him.