You must first be living in a democracy before you can clearly understand democracy's shortfalls or, as some would argue, its pitfalls. Hong Kong has chased democracy not blindly but with insufficient regard for the baggage that it carries.
I have just returned to Hong Kong from my second home, the United States, which brands itself as the beacon for democracy. It was my first visit back since the man I voted for president, Barack Obama, formally took office last January. Obama is a changed man. He didn't change of his own accord after a year in office. The baggage of democracy changed him.
I remember well that exhilarating moment in November 2008 when news of Obama's victory flashed across the TV in my Hong Kong living room. If democracy can make a black man win, then democracy surely must also let him fulfil the promises that got him elected, I thought. That, of course, was naive of me.
Democracy is an idea that works only if the participants of the idea allow it to work for the greater good. In Hong Kong we have thought only as far as achieving the idea of democracy without giving enough thought to the consequences of it.
I am not arguing against democracy. I am simply saying it comes with baggage. Hong Kong needs to prepare itself for this by discarding the notion long fed into our psyche that democracy itself will guarantee far better governance that what we now have. It will some of the time, we can hope it can most of the time, but it definitely won't all of the time.
This fact hit home hard during my holiday season back in America when I could observe up-close the vicious attacks Obama faced from his political opponents in trying to reform the country's broken health care system.
What is so wrong with a law that would ensure all Americans have medical insurance, including the 30 million who now can't afford it? What is so wrong with a law that prevents insurance companies from cutting your coverage if you get sick, or refusing to pay up for a pre-existing condition? What is so wrong with a law that allows you to buy insurance from the government if you can't afford the outrageous private sector prices?
