Extradition bill protests show the pro-Beijing bloc didn’t learn from history, and now must pay the price

The massive upsurge in voter registration since the protests began can only mean bad news for the establishment. Many factors contributed to this point, but the biggest problem is their repeat of the mistakes of 2003

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From left, Tommy Cheung, Felix Chung and James Tien of the Liberal Party meet the press in May 2017. On July 8 this year, Tien said Cheung and two other members of the Executive Council should take responsibility for the public backlash against the extradition amendment and resign. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Published: 4:00pm, 14 Jul 2019Updated: 8:23pm, 14 Jul 2019

We know what they say: those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Nothing better describes Hong Kong’s pro-establishment right now. It’s as if they are suffering from collective amnesia – how else are we supposed to read the way they walked right into the extradition-bill trap? It’s as if 2003 never happened, and the political disaster brought on by the Tung Chee-hwa administration’s failed attempt to enact Article 23 national security legislation didn’t teach them anything.

The pro-establishment camp put all their eggs in Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s extradition-bill basket. Now they have to pay the price of being just as blind and deaf to public sentiment as the Lam administration. If things continue to follow the script of the 2003 disaster, then the worst is yet to come – at the polls later this year.

Unfortunately for these government-friendly legislators, the intense opposition to the extradition bill over the past two months has given Hong Kong 350,000 new registered voters. We are talking about a close-to-10 per cent jump in registered voters from just last year. At the end of 2018, Hong Kong had 3.81 million voters.

This is likely to be disastrous for the pro-establishment bloc in the November district-level elections, where seats are returned by the first-past-the-post system. It’s a no-brainer that a massive loss will translate into significant political party exoduses.

There are no permanent enemies and no permanent friends in politics. The gravitational pull of politics is the reason why the once-fragmented opposition is enjoying its newfound strength in unity while the pro-establishment bloc is challenged by an unprecedented level of disunity.