Process derailed

A great collision is about to occur. There's going to be such a big bang that Hong Kong will take a long time to pick up the pieces. We're still picking up the pieces from the last crash, back in 2005, when the democracy camp derailed Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's political reforms, claiming they were fake.

Hong Kong's democracy train has been stuck on the tracks since then, waiting to restart. The longer it is kept waiting, the harder it is to get it moving again. Tsang wants to get the train going again, but slowly, chugging towards only partial democratic reforms for the next round of elections in 2012.

The democrats see that as yet another underhand move to slow democracy's advance. They want a faster train that will arrive at democracy's door by 2012 - or, to at least travel on tracks that will give the people a good view of what Beijing's promise of full-blown democracy will look like. They want exact details now of the promised universal suffrage due to start in 2017 for the chief executive election and then for all the legislature in 2020.

Two things can happen. Tsang can comply or the democrats can compromise. But the trouble is that Tsang is powerless to comply - the decision rests with Beijing - and the democrats are in no mood to compromise.

That leaves the democracy train rusting in the middle of nowhere, shunted up a siding, and waiting to be hitched to a new engine.

It is now the calm before the crash. Everyone is waiting for Tsang's proposals. The democrats think they can force his hand with political gimmickry.

One idea is that, if Tsang doesn't prevent a crash by providing a detailed democracy road map, a democratic legislator will resign from each constituency, thereby forcing a by-election that will be dubbed a 'referendum' on democracy.