My Take | The fight for universal suffrage may be the end of us all
- Any olive branch offered by Carrie Lam is unlikely to be accepted in a city where a leaderless, but militant movement, opposes governments and national unity
But it is also the most difficult and will take the longest to satisfy, if at all. Given that, does it mean the movement plans on protesting, resisting and rioting indefinitely?
If that’s the case, are we entering into a prolonged period of instability and violence, the start of the kind of decades-long “Troubles” we saw in Northern Ireland before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement?
But, let’s work with a few more positive scenarios and see how realistically achievable they are. Maybe things aren’t so gloomy. The only available democracy plan still on the books – literally because it’s the national law promulgated by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress – is the one offered by the local government and rejected by the opposition pan-democrats in 2015.
If the pan-dems rejected it then, it’s even less likely they would accept it now. It’s not even clear the Hong Kong government could trigger the so-called five-step process because Beijing is not in any mood to make that offer again. It has already concluded that if it can’t put out the fire in Hong Kong, it will let it burn itself out, or at least contain it to make sure it doesn’t spread northwards.