There is no doubting it. Those thousands of banners on the 2006 Asian Games telling us 'Hong Kong For Sure' got one thing right. Hong Kong voted for Hong Kong for sure. Obviously few others did.
It makes you wonder whether our games bid committee really understood how these things are done in all its concentration on telling us how good our chances were.
Perhaps its members suffered from some confusion with the Legco elections here. Hate to tell you this, Mrs Chan, but you already had the Hong Kong vote sewed up. There were unfortunately a few others and perhaps they did not want a completely equitable vote, sort of like functional constituencies, you know.
Specifically there are 18 countries west of India represented in the games, yes, west of India. Some of them may be even smaller than Hong Kong but there are only 43 countries in total in the games and these 18 can pack a punch when they are of like minds. You can hardly blame them for being so on this occasion. Of the 14 games awarded before they ganged up to get one for Doha, only one had gone their way - Teheran in 1974. At least they know how to gang up, an internationally accepted practice in sport events like this.
Our mob, pledging its cleanliness, obviously had no clue how to do it so here is a piece of advice for its next foray. Bring a suitcase, a full one. Bring another for your clothes. It is a tactic that seems to have won some cities their Olympic Games. Surely it would do for the Asian Games and, if it is beneath you, folks, then do not bid.
But there is another misunderstanding that needs to be set straight. Once again the Financial Services Bureau has tried to tell us such games make sense in money terms because of the estimated HK$862 million contribution they would make to gross domestic product.
Now that actually amounts to less than a sniffle in a typhoon. It is not even one tenth of 1 per cent of our annual GDP. The point, however, is that we do not really get even that sniffle.
