Everybody has stuck to the script so far. The government produced a regurgitated political reform package. Democracy proponents ridiculed it as an insult to democracy. Government supporters praised it as a timely salute to democracy. And radical legislators clowned around when Chief Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen presented the package to lawmakers last Wednesday.
It took me a while to figure out the symbolism of legislator 'Long Hair' Leung Kwok-hung's cardboard microwave oven which he hurled at Tang. Leung never deviates from the script. He always hurls things at officials in the Legislative Council, where members enjoy the legal privilege to say or do whatever they want without being sued. His cardboard microwave was meant to symbolise reheated food, which is how democracy activists see the reform package. Actually, they're seeing it wrong. This new plan is not a reheated version of the 2005 package that the democrats voted down. The government has tweaked some of the old ideas after digesting public opinion. So, it's more of a regurgitated plan.
Leung's make-believe microwave missed Tang who, in any case, was just a messenger for Beijing. And we all know the messenger is the wrong person to shoot. As an emissary, Tang's task was to loyally deliver the regurgitated message. He stuck so numbingly to the script that it's a wonder he didn't drive anyone berserk.
If anything exemplifies Hong Kong's bizarre quest for democracy, it was Tang's recurring smile in between his attempt at smug humour in reply to tired questions from democracy legislators. Step back for a moment and look at our fight for democracy from the outside. It can appear quite comical.
This is not a democracy 'struggle' in the full meaning of the word although some participants like to fantasise that it is. Leung and his League of Social Democrats struggle for democracy by throwing bananas at the chief executive. They exert their right to speak by trying to shut others up. Former chief secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang, dubbed the 'conscience' of Hong Kong by the Western media, once took time out from the struggling demands of a democracy march to pop into the hairdressers. Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi, languishing under house arrest, must be wondering where she went wrong with her own democracy struggle.
The preferred dress code for Hong Kong's democracy struggle is neither Nelson Mandela's guerilla garb - thank goodness - nor Mahatma Gandhi's humble dhoti but pinstripe suits and designer dresses. Both were evident in the Legco chamber last Wednesday when the pinstripe-suited Tang tangled with his adversaries - not over democracy, but the semantics of it. It came across more as a tango than a tangle.