I AM certainly not part of the down-with-Patten campaign, but the more I am bombarded with Governor Patten's flamboyance, the more I miss the low-profile, no-nonsense, and result-oriented David Wilson.
The controversial Mr Patten is obviously gifted with a knack in fabricating realities, one being that the people of Hongkong want the kind of democracy he is selling. Anyone with a serious train of thought, except those idealists perched in their ivory towers, will agree that democracy is a means rather than an end. It is a means, like any other political philosophy, through which we can achieve a state where everybody lives happily.
And democracy is not an absolute conceptual entity. Like any human activity, it is a continuum. To say that a society is either a democracy or it is not, is artificial and shallow. I do not dispute that democracy is one of the ultimate goals of civilisation, not least because it guarantees human rights. But then again democracy is necessarily manifested in different degrees.
More important than the ''absolute'' version of democracy is that a country or any political entity is moving towards and in the direction of that ideal state.
In this light, I would argue that China and Hongkong are being democratised and there is democracy in both places, however limited it may be. Whoever is crusading for democracy should have a sense of proportion.
They have every right to rock the boat, but they must not rock too hard. Hongkong is and will be my home, and it is the home of many others who may not be able to articulate their ideas as eloquently as some (hopefully idealist) politicians, some of whomhave probably obtained a passport to retreat with the moment things get out of hand.