Middlemen tell why dialogue to end Hong Kong's Occupy protests were doomed to failure

Over-cautious senior officials and half-hearted student leaders dashed hopes of resolving the issues that triggered the Occupy Central mass sit-ins through a historic dialogue last October, according to two middlemen.

On the eve of the first anniversary of the protests, Professor Joseph Chan Cho-wai, a political scientist at the University of Hong Kong, and NGO worker Gloria Chang Wan-ki, president of the HKU students' union in 2000, broke their silence to the Post on their efforts to bring the concerned parties together for televised talks.

Their involvement started on October 15, when Chang received a phone call from then Federation of Students secretary general Alex Chow Yong-kang, who sought a meeting in Legislative Council complex that night to explore the possibility of talks with officials. Chan joined the meeting, and from that night to October 18, the duo conveyed messages between students and officials at separate meetings.

The students needed the middlemen to act before holding the formal talks. Chow said: "If we met officials behind closed doors, we were concerned that the protesters would think we had a secret deal."

So the next day, the pair met Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and HKU vice-chancellor Professor Peter Mathieson at the latter's residence in Pok Fu Lam.

In the exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post, Chan said during their meetings with senior officials, he and Chang suggested that, in order to break the deadlock over the electoral reform, the SAR government should submit a supplementary report to the National People's Congress Standing Committee and set up a dialogue platform to discuss how to elect the chief executive by universal suffrage in 2017.