This month’s official outburst of orchestrated, obsessive, overblown mouth-frothing concerns the newly elected Legislative Council members who failed the swearing-in kowtow test. Their immature antics, which upset the highly sensitive Ronny, are vulgarity induced by self-hatred and opposed by 99.9% of teachers for hurting the feelings of all Chinese people. (Logically, 99.9% of teachers would agree, it follows that anyone whose feelings were not hurt is not Chinese.)
It falls to Global Times to consider that those responsible for the ‘floor show/ridiculous farce/profanity’ have support, and the city is increasingly complicated. ‘Complicated’ (also known as ‘contradictions’) is Communist-speak for ‘maybe we are partly responsible for screwing things up here’.
This is a battle of wits. The Hong Kong government, under Liaison Office direction, is potentially walking into a trap by fixating on punishing a handful of young democratically elected representatives for not conforming to the ceremonial symbolism. The radicals also risk falling into a trap, if they give officials evidence to convince the public that they are mere troublemakers, money-wasters, sympathetic to Japanese militarism or – heaven forbid – getting boring.
But the battle is between a lumbering and predictable, simple-minded elephant and some agile, bright and funny gnats. When Sixtus Leung and Yau Wai-ching get their second chance to take their oaths correctly on Wednesday, they could do worse than recite the wording 100% accurately, in finest Mandarin, preferably wearing little Mao badges and carrying mysterious red-bound books – with, of course, totally straight faces.
Ronny Tong is under the illusion that he can impress Peking with reasonableness, as he would call it, always a key and often winning concept in English law, but Peking is only impressed by:
Total obdience and subservience ( intellect no importance -Tung / corruption and lack of popular support no object – Leung)
Predictable smarmy bourgeois harmlessness (Donald)
The other way to impress them is through shows of:
Insurrection
Sabotage
Murderous suppression of dissent
Rattlesnake deviousness and unpredictability
As a barrister, Tong possesses nothing Peking is looking for. He should give up and join the Resistance.
@Enid (Candida Albicans)
Not sure your argument holds up:
First, as Ronny still hasn’t worked out that standing in the middle of the road gets you run over or arrested and holding the third rail gets you electrocuted, he falls firmly into Beijing’s chief demographic: the willfully, woefully stupid.
Secondly, as a barrister he falls squarely into the predictable smarmy bourgeois harmlessness demographic too.
“… they could do worse than recite the wording 100% accurately, in finest Mandarin, preferably wearing little Mao badges and carrying mysterious red-bound books – with, of course, totally straight faces.”
Brilliant idea do they read your blog – probably not ? Could I also suggest green red guard fatigues as well and I imagine the Honourable Yau Wai-Ching would look rather arresting !
LRE…Lengthy retarded exculpation???
I disagree. Ronny is the most dangerous of people. The benevolent well-meaning amateur politician bent on appeasement. History is littered with such disastrous personalities, and indeed they do get into power sometimes.
From the Peking Man viewpoint, he is fatally contaminated by his long preoccupation with concepts like justice, the rule of law, the primacy of the judiciary. Peking would sooner deal with a dolt like John Tsang or a diseased opportunist like Charnwut Chan.
As for my new title, the award to Bob The Mumbling Moron makes it clear that we can now all count ourselves in the running for a Nobel Prozac.
This is indeed a good idea. Read the thing with exactitude and solemnity. But no Mandarin, no badges. (Or fatigues).
Yet half way through Sixtus takes off a blue t-shirt to reveal a green one beneath, mimicking the hostage video of the bookseller. The forced confession. Much more recent, ‘viral’, young. Mao, old hat.
Deliver the pledge spot on; so there’s no tangle of precedent, lawyers or ‘interpretations’.
It would be rather more exciting if the ‘Honourable’ (not yet, not sworn in) Ms Yau did it, but let’s not ramp things up. She could simply do the pledge with a big smile on her face.
Some sort of subtlety is a more powerful statement than yellow umbrellas (Long Hair), Shee-na, bookend statements around the pledge.
Just say it straight.
If they do it in Mandarin, they will get world press.
Am I missing something, the pro-gov side is going to filibuster Weds meeting. Now what was Holden Chow’s solemn election platform, oh yeah, stop the filibustering.
The two Neophytes have turned Legco on its head.
@Joe Blow
They already got more press in one-day than most of that dead chamber in their entire miserable political careers. From that perspective alone their election campaigns have been a resounding success.
@ Enid (Candida Albicans)
Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill — Ronny Tong was, is and always will be an ineffectual nobody, politically speaking. Your most dangerous of people’s party can’t even get a single seat in a system that is deliberate designed to help fringe candidates get elected.
Ronny Tong is the political equivalent of dead squirrel — in his prime, he was utterly un-intimidating; now he’s going nowhere and whilst he’s a bit sad to behold, he’s an easily forgotten irrelevance in the grand scheme of things.