Pan-dems should not ignore the low-hanging fruit in political reform

It is hard to help the pan-democrats get out of the hole they are in when they keep digging to make it deeper.

By clinging for so long to the lost cause of public/party nomination and dropping all moderate options from their referendum, they reduced its moral weight and became inextricably linked to the farce of Occupy Central. If there is one thing we know about dealing with Beijing, it is, as Rita Fan Hsu Lai-tai so perceptively said recently, that "megaphone diplomacy does not work".

Now the pan-democrats are pledging not to take part in the next phase of public consultation about political reform, claiming it won't be genuine and there is nothing to be gained by it.

Au contraire, my friends; there is much potential for reform in areas that are entirely within Hong Kong's purview and therefore should not be precluded by the National People's Congress Standing Committee's recent ruling.

Take, for example, the basic promise of one man, one vote. We have been assured by Basic Law Committee chairman Li Fei that this is the major gift Beijing is granting to Hong Kong people and we should be satisfied with it, as it is much more than the British gave us in 150 years. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and a previous holder of the post, Tung Chee-hwa, have said pretty much the same.

Just in case there was any lingering doubt on the matter, no less an authority than Asia's richest man, Li Ka-shing, has come out swinging in support.

But would that be the same Li Ka-shing who, in fact, has dozens of votes because Hong Kong still - incredibly - allows corporate voting? It surely would. In fact, he and a handful of other tycoons control literally hundreds of votes through their ownership of corporations and therefore exercise a large measure of control over the Election Committee - soon to be the nominating committee - for chief executive and many of the functional constituency seats in the Legislative Council.