Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen was telling the plain truth when he said the constitutional reform question has tortured society for more than 20 years.
'I deeply believe there is need to put a stop to it,' he said at a question-and-answer session in the Legislative Council last week.
Ordinary people would have had no difficulty getting a sense of what he was alluding to if they had watched Mr Tsang and pan-democrat legislators wrestling on Thursday over the handling of the camp's proposals for universal suffrage in 2012.
At one point, it appeared clear that the package jointly sponsored by 22 pan-democratic lawmakers would be included in a government green paper on options for achieving universal suffrage. The paper will be published for public consultation this summer.
Asked by Audrey Eu Yuet-mee whether their model would be included in the green paper, Mr Tsang told the Civic Party legislator: 'It will be included.'
But when pressed by another democrat, Frederick Fung Kin-kee, on whether their proposal would be one of the three models put forward, the chief executive was ambivalent.