The green paper on constitutional development falls far short of Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's election promise. It puts forward no model for universal suffrage, no road map and no timetable for achieving it. Instead, the whole thing is broken into components with 'options' under each component, reminiscent of a complicated menu for choosing some kind of set lunch.
The full version of the green paper, with its hundreds of permutations and combinations, is likely to put off all but the most dedicated. Most people will only know what the government has chosen to set out in a simplified version of 'highlights'. These consist of familiar questions, for example: 'When should universal suffrage be implemented for the election of the chief executive/Legco: 2012, 2016/2017 or even later', and so on.
However, this simplified version is full of hidden traps for the unwary.
One glaring example is over the number of chief executive candidates. The options are: two to four, eight at most, and 10 or more. But this is a sham. The real question is whether there should be a procedure whereby unwelcome candidates can be excluded. The way the options are put, chances are most people will choose 'two to four' as the most reasonable answer. This means a mechanism will be required for the nomination committee to pick the right number of candidates out of however many. Almost any system of selection will succeed in excluding a democratic candidate such as Alan Leong Kah-kit. The system may well produce two candidates, both of whom are Beijing favourites.
To expose the traps and, at the same time, encourage the public to respond to the green paper intelligently, the democrats have launched a 'recommended response' street campaign this week.
However, this is not enough. To stall, mislead and sap the energy of the democrats is only a small part of the green paper's game plan. The more serious aim is to change the goal radically, once and for all, by redefining 'universal suffrage'.
In a way, Mr Tsang was not lying when he promised an 'ultimate' solution to the issue of universal suffrage, and said that how soon universal suffrage could be achieved would depend on the model chosen.