It's all quiet on the banana front
It has been a year since maverick lawmaker Wong Yuk-man took Legco chamber decorum to a new level by throwing a bunch of bananas at Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen during his policy address. Students of legislators' behaviour may also remember the subsequent furore over the use of Cantonese expletives by Wong and his fellow League of Social Democrats members. So can we expect similar entertainment tomorrow when Tsang delivers his 2009 address? Wong says: 'If I rush on stage to mess up Donald Tsang's showtime, the pan-democrats will say I am damaging unity in our camp. So I am just going to follow the gang.' What 'the gang' - namely 23 pan-democrats who met yesterday - is planning is a mass walkout if Tsang fails to come up with a firm road map for universal suffrage. They are first planning to greet him with a sea of placards.
Exco chief keeps us in the picture
Having taken about 300 pictures at the 60th National Day celebrations in Beijing, Donald Tsang has yet to share any of them with the public. But Executive Council convenor Leung Chun-ying, tipped as a frontrunner to be the next chief executive, has already posted on his website about 20 pictures he took as a guest in the capital. Although none show him with state leaders, there is one involving President Hu Jintao - the microphone he used on the Tiananmen Square podium. Leung's pictures show him watching the grand military march and celebrations.
Scandal may bring a democratic rethink
Nobody is going to admit it publicly, but pan-democrats may have to scale down their so-called 'de facto referendum' on universal suffrage because of the sexual harassment scandal surrounding Democratic Party lawmaker Kam Nai-wai. If Kam is removed from office as a result of the Legco inquiry into the allegations against him, it will pull the skids from under their plan for one lawmaker in each of the five geographical constituencies to resign and fight by-elections after the political reform blueprint is unveiled. 'It would be near impossible for us to win a seat on Hong Kong Island if Kam quits around the time when we launch the resignation plan,' one pan-democrat behind the scheme said. 'Perhaps instead of resignation in five constituencies, we will have to make it four.'
