Time for Beijing to be creative, and ensure Leung doesn't get second term

There are ways out of Hong Kong's current impasse over political reform if only the principals can indulge in some creative political thinking. Beijing does not need to back down, as student protesters have demanded. It just needs to move forward, and the way forward lies in two directions.

One is that Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying should not serve a second term; the other is that public recommendation can serve as a substitute for public nomination.

First, the Leung problem. Nothing has been said officially about who Beijing wants to stand as its preferred candidate in the 2017 election. Local loyalist partisans have not been shy about voicing what they assume to be Beijing's intentions. Beijing is, they say, exceedingly chagrined over the failure of all three post-1997 chief executives to establish the authority needed to govern properly. With their constant carping and agitation, pro-democracy forces have succeeded in discrediting all of Beijing's choices.

Officials have yet to grasp that their ways do not sit well with the Hong Kong public as a whole and that stable, effective governance here must be based on some approximation of the consent of the governed ideal. So be it. This can be a learning experience for Beijing as well because its current thinking about how to establish that consent cannot work.

Beijing's idea is to have the nominating committee nominate Leung. Voters would then rubber-stamp his election as the leading candidate with the advantage of incumbency. That would, as Beijing sees it, create a chief executive legitimised and strengthened by Hong Kong's first ever universal suffrage election.

This is nice in theory, but based on a formalistic view of how democratic authority is established.

After the debacle of the current electoral reform exercise, it is probably safe to assume that Leung will not be receiving many votes from the 50-plus per cent of the voting public that has continued to elect pro-democracy candidates. These voters do so because their candidates back pro-democracy core values, not necessarily because people have any great faith in pan-democrats' political skills or abilities - which means these voters care most about those values and want to safeguard them.