A quarter of a century has passed and 11 consultation documents on Hong Kong's electoral system have been released since debate on the city's political reform began. But the goal of universal suffrage still seems a long way off.
And those who have followed the debate on constitutional development since the mid-1980s may feel a sense of deja vu on hearing the government's plan to allow 405 elected district councillors to vote on the five extra Legislative Council seats in 2012 and to make them members of the Election Committee that picks the chief executive that year.
The pan-democratic camp has dismissed this proposal, which is expected to be included in the forthcoming public consultation, ridiculing it as a rehash of the reform proposal for the 2007-08 elections, which they rejected in 2005.
But in fact the so-called 'district councils model' was first adopted by the colonial government in 1985 in an attempt to inject a democratic element into the Legislative Council.
In that year's polls, 12 legislators were returned by an 'electoral college' of district councillors. The practice was repeated in 1988 and 1995.
During the drafting of the Basic Law between 1985 and 1990, a district-councillor electoral college was viewed by pro-democracy groups as a relatively democratic method for electing the Legco after 1997.
In a proposal put forward in 1986, the 'group of 190' pro-democracy activists, suggested returning half of Legco's seats by direct election in 1997 with another 25 per cent returned by electoral college. The remaining 25 per cent would be elected by functional constituencies - commercial, industrial, education and legal sectors. The group also demanded that the chief executive be elected by a one man-one vote system in 1997.