Letters | Why Hong Kong would still be protesting today, even if the 2014 political reform package had been passed

September 28 marked the fifth anniversary of the start of the 2014 Occupy movement, but Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor continues to rule out political reform outside the 2014 political framework.

Meanwhile, the establishment here and in China seeks to reframe the political unrest as the work of foreign agents, the fault of the property developers (well, which one is it?) or the fault of pan-democrats for vetoing the 2014 political framework under which Hong Kong could have had universal suffrage.

My recollection is that it was killed not by the veto, but by the establishment’s Legislative Council members failing to vote.

The cause of the current unrest is in plain sight – the failure to adopt a political framework which would deliver universal suffrage in accordance with the plain words of the Basic Law, rather than China’s strained interpretation.