OUR colleagues in London were very surprised you voted against Chris Patten,'' a British journalist said to me last week, referring to the marathon 20-hour Legislative Council debate on June 29-30 on constitutional reforms.
In the past 20 months, some Western journalists have been mesmerised by the Governor's artful performance to the extent that some even went over the top and portrayed him as a fighter for democracy and freedom.
For some of these people, my vote against the government bill should explode the myth and expose the package for what it really was: ''a drop of democracy''.
More importantly, my vote will serve as a reminder to Britain that some Hong Kong people, including those in the pro-democracy lobby, found her offer wanting and rejected it.
Another reason I voted against the government bill was that I had my own private member's bill coming up in the same debate. Unless I suffered from schizophrenia, it would be inexplicable for me to vote for the government bill as well as for my own, when both were about arrangements for the 1995 Legco elections.
Some Legco members have criticised what they called my ''all or nothing'' approach. I would have thought it was patently obvious that I would only support my bill, or somebody else's, but not both. Hence it has to be ''all or nothing''.