Then & now: forcing the issue
As the public mood deteriorates, PLA deployment in the face of civil unrest is looking ever more probable, writes Jason Wordie
As predicted, Hong Kong’s longheralded “public consultation” on constitutional reform, which dragged on farcically for months, has achieved nothing meaningful, and the public mood continues to harden.
Figures on all sides of the debate have repeatedly spelled out, in coded language, the likely outcome when, in the manner of a slow-motion train wreck, public dissatisfaction with systemically poor governance becomes strained beyond breaking point.
Former chief secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang recently wrote about the possibility of “serious social unrest”, and Wang Guangya, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, has reiterated, whenever Occupy Central is mentioned, that the central government remains prepared to assist Hong Kong authorities in maintaining order, if necessary.
A former head of Xinhua in Hong Kong, Zhou Nan, also made it clear the PLA would become involved if riots were to envelop Hong Kong. How much more unambiguous does anyone need to be? That both the possibility of riots and a military response to them is even publicly mentioned should have alarm bells ringing at the highest levels. Frighteningly – yet predictably – what passes for leadership in Hong Kong continues to sleepwalk towards the abyss.
What happens when a government rapidly loses control of public order and police find themselves unable to manage a riot?
Or when the mechanisms of government – or key personalities within it – are so thoroughly discredited with the public they no longer have any popular authority and are openly disobeyed?
