The 2020 Legislative Council election could and should have gone ahead this September. The announcement by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor that she was postponing it for a year is both a major strategic error and a missed opportunity. The reasons cited for not going ahead next month centre around the Covid-19 pandemic: candidates would not be free to campaign widely because of social distancing, it would be difficult to recruit and train sufficient polling staff, and people queuing to vote would risk compounding the health crisis. Certainly, the virus needs to be taken seriously. But the question of whether risks could have been mitigated seems not to have been addressed. The Hong Kong electorate is pretty sophisticated. It knows what the different political parties stand for. If a candidate claims to be a member of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, the Democratic, Labour, Civic or any other party, voters know what is in the tin. With social media now so pervasive, there is no shortage of ways in which candidates can get their message across. Mention has been made of the need to brief 30,000 polling supervisors and the difficulty of doing so in a time of social distancing. What happened to the 30,000 who did exactly the same job just 10 months ago in the district council elections? Finally, there is the voting process itself. One practical solution would be to spread the voting over four days and each day into two seven-hour sessions (7am to 2pm, one hour to clear the queue, then 3pm to 10pm). Then allocate the time slots to residents using, say, their ID card number. In this way, social distancing could be maintained in the polling stations and outside. But were such ideas considered? The contrast with Singapore could not be more stark. Even though it had 45,000 Covid-19 infections at the time, it was able to organise a smoothly run general election , Hong Kong (with some 4,000 infections) could not. If you were sitting in North America or Europe with a business location decision to make, which one would you think was Asia’s World City? Besides, nobody knows for sure when the postponed election can be held. Everyone is praying for early development of an effective vaccine, and there are some encouraging reports of progress. But the road ahead could be very long indeed. There are some viruses the world has known about for decades which are still without a proper treatment. There is a possibility we may have to live with this one for many years to come. So the only certain effect of the election announcement is “not this year”. Why we must all get used to living with Covid-19 Which leaves Hong Kong with two urgent interim problems which it is not in a position to solve by itself because they are outside the purview of the Basic Law. The first is how to provide for a functioning legitimate legislature until there is an election – whenever that may be. One mooted solution is to simply extend the existing Legco for an extra year and curtail the next one to three years to restore the cycle. If this idea is adopted, then what to do with the four serving members who have been ruled ineligible to stand in the next election? It seems odd to allow them to continue, but even odder to remove members who were legally elected by the people of Hong Kong. Lam has no solution to either of these problems, so she has thrown the ball to the central government . This is not a case of Beijing encroaching on Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy but rather of the local administration surrendering control through failure to think things through properly and take decisive action. The opportunities we have missed are to some extent the obverse of these problems. A decision to go ahead with the election next month despite the difficult circumstances – perhaps with a brief two-week delay, as permitted by law , to make special arrangements – would have demonstrated that the Hong Kong administration was still in charge of local affairs and the Basic Law was still operating smoothly. It would have avoided the dilemmas described above. Beijing’s defence of national security should be open and above board Some have speculated that the delay was to save the DAB and its allies from another drubbing at the polls. But I believe Lam’s own explanation: she said last week she did not want to be blamed if holding the election led to a spike in virus infections. There are only losers in the present situation. Beijing has been dragged in to sort out matters that should have been settled locally. The Hong Kong administration has been shown to be weak and inept. Hongkongers have been deprived of their right to vote. Moreover, whatever the outcome of the election whenever it is held, there is a large proportion of the population not represented by pro-government parties that the administration needs to engage with. That essential process is urgent and has not gone away. Much better to have started it sooner rather than later. Mike Rowse is the CEO of Treloar Enterprises