Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Did the Hong Kong pro-democrats planning to resign from the legislature and treat the subsequent by-elections as a referendum expect Beijing, and thus local government officials and supporters, to take them this seriously?

Referendums may not take place in Hong Kong, we are assured, because the Basic Law does not allow for them.  By this reckoning, public consultation exercises – like the one currently underway about the proposed election methods for 2012 – should not take place either.  Indeed, as a South China Morning Post editorial pointed out, the Basic Law does not give us the right to breathe.

Still, has anyone seriously suggested that a genuine referendum could or should take place?  I don’t recall any such thing, but that doesn’t stop Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Stephen Lam protesting at embarrassing length that the Government will not countenance a referendum, has never held a referendum, is not holding a referendum, and will not at any time in the future hold a referendum, ever, ever, ever.  And nor, now you mention it, will it even so much as respond to any suggestion about a referendum.  Thank God he doesn’t like the idea, otherwise he’d go on about it for ever.

Government supporters like the fictitious Mary Ma at the Standard meanwhile do their best to fight the dire referendum menace by pointing out that a referendum can’t happen in the Big Lychee because we’re not a country (as if cities don’t have referendums) or because they are unconstitutional (like breathing, see above).

All this whining, teeth-gnashing and bed-wetting – just because of an idea to force by-elections and, as a prank or gimmick, call them a ‘referendum’.  It is a measure of Beijing’s horror of the principal of democracy that its officials go into hysterics, on around 5 or 6 on the Richter scale, at the very mention of the ‘r’ word, however misapplied, and insist that their local allies join in.

Where else have we seen this mouth-frothing over a word recently?  Malaysia, where some Muslims have taken exception to the fact that Christians using the Malay language use the Malay word for God, ‘Allah’, which is one of many loan words from Arabic.  (Sharp-eyed strollers through Hong Kong on a Sunday will notice that some Indonesians having a day off will be clutching a volume titled ‘Alkitab’, another Arabic loan to Malay, meaning ‘the book’; it is a Bible.)

They have managed to work themselves up into a state of heightened excitement and fury, in a way that Quakers, Lutherans, Catholics, Methodists and for that matter Buddhists and Zoroastrians for some reason generally do not, because they feel that only Muslims should use the word.  This makes no sense; Arab Christians have called God ‘allah’ since before Islam was founded – what other word could they have used?  Malay is not the only language to borrow words from Arabic.  Will Malay extremists attack non-Muslim English-speakers for using ‘algebra’, ‘alcohol’, ‘sugar’ and ‘saffron’?  Perhaps it depends how desperate they are to burn a church.

Some Pro-Beijing figures in Hong Kong are arguing against contesting the five by-elections on the grounds that it would endorse the idea that the polls will somehow represent a referendum.  In other words, if pro-democrats had declared the by-elections to be a ‘reflection’, ‘refreshment’ or ‘refutation’ it would be OK, but if they bestow them with the title ‘referendum’ it’s suddenly not OK, even though it is exactly the same process with exactly the same legal and constitutional effect.

This petrified, self-inflicted variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder is what the loyalists put themselves through when someone (playfully and utterly unconvincingly) pretends to hold a referendum.  What happens if the real thing turns up?

Maybe they should have a referendum on banning people from calling things referendums when they’re not.

A quick stroll near the Legislative Council on Saturday morning showed what looked like a serious over-provisioning of gallant boys in blue, given the small size of the crowd:

The events that evening, when the mostly young, anti-express rail activists mounting the Great Legco Siege of 2010 scuffled with pepper spray-wielding cops represented the nearest Hong Kong has seen to locally originated political violence for years, maybe decades.  Philip Wong Yu-hong, the pro-Beijing legislator whose main claim to fame is making an obscene gesture to pro-democracy protestors outside the Legislative Council in 2003, caught a full-looking water bottle on the back of the head.  The prurient, voyeuristic and bloodthirsty may enjoy watching and re-watching the outrage starting from the 0.37 mark here:

This was after he and his colleagues had been trapped inside for hours by crowds demonstrating against the vote approving HK$66.9 billion funding for the rail project.  Police eventually created a cordon through which ‘Dr’ Wong and the others made what may have been their first ever visit to an MTR station.

The city’s leaders, their detractors and all the usual chattering bystanders are now engaged in a frenzied analysis of the underlying causes of the conflict.  Much of the attention is aimed at the ‘post-80s’ generation of teens and 20-somethings who made their debut a few years ago with the protests to save the Star Ferry and Queens Piers from the Central Reclamation, another mega-project devised by bureaucrats behind closed doors and rammed through regardless of opposition.

Predictably, officials are bleating about the need to ‘improve communication’, the favoured remedy for public opposition since the dawn of Tung Chee-hwa’s demise.  It is based on the assumption that the government has failed by not adequately conveying the correctness of its policies to the people, who implicitly must take some of the blame for being too stupid to understand.  A key part of this is to pretend to listen – and what could be more depressing than vague plans to ‘reach out’ to the tech-savvy younger generation through online forums?  Whatever happens, our visionary leaders will not open their ears to the basic message: if you want to stop being criticized for wasting public wealth on projects that benefit only the tycoons, stop doing it and spend the money on parks or health care instead.

Is Leung Chun-ying, the convenor of the Executive Council and undeclared but obvious aspirant to be next Chief Executive from 2012, secretly masterminding the youthful rebellion from behind the scenes?  In the movie version, he would be; he is already describing the weekend’s events and the whole high-speed rail mess as having taught the government a lesson. By apparently disowning any personal responsibility as a member of our top policy-making body, he is confirming that the cabinet is simply a rubber stamp for concrete-crazed incumbent Donald Tsang.

Since Sir Bow-Tie is only doing the bidding of his masters in Beijing, and since Leung would not indulge in brazen, opportunistic, populist treachery without the blessing of someone else up there, we can assume that there is something of a little power struggle over Hong Kong’s future at Central People’s Government level.  To complicate matters, there is the announcement by Beijing’s Hong Kong affairs people that the by-election ‘referendum’ concept is unconstitutional.  Although a communist-run one-party state could never allow an actual referendum, it can hardly prevent by-elections if legislators in Hong Kong resign.  By dreaming aloud that it is illegal to pretend such a poll is a referendum, the Chinese officials are making it more likely that people will treat it as one.  All very confusing.

Here's one for that bottle-thrower

The Tung Chee-hwa Decline and Fall Reenactment Society, also known as the Donald Tsang administration, takes an important step in re-creating the mood of the early 2000s as it pointedly echoes one of its critics’ opinions in the hope that heightened popularity will ensue.  Six or seven years ago, we had to increase anti-suicide measures every time the crop-haired one plunged the city into despair when he pre-empted and even exceeded the opposition’s moans by bewailing all the misery and suffering Hong Kong was enduring under his rule.  This time the chief executive, while not actually conceding that it is what Premier Wen Jiabao meant when he used the phrase a few weeks back, declares that the Big Lychee is indeed suffering from “deep-rooted conflicts” that are social and political, not just economic.

The taxonomy of deep-rooted conflicts being what it is, most clear-headed people probably never thought it made sense to divide Hong Kong’s profound illogicalities and injustices into three neat categories.  But our visionary local leaders, following the example set by our masters in Beijing, have long promoted what sociologists or similar bores would call an artificial construct, whereby this is an economic city not a political one, we must focus on the economy, and we must be mindful of things called ‘livelihood issues’ and ‘grassroots’.

It is unlikely that Sir Bow-Tie’s apparent attempt to be in tune with his detractors and receptive to the overall restlessness out there will win him any sympathy.  If some of our problems can be classed as ‘social’, he will insist, we must build more infrastructure, because that will create jobs, and if some count as ‘political’ then it shows how badly we need a consensus on his non-reform package for the 2012 elections.

This is why it will be hard for the Tsang government to precisely emulate its predecessor’s deterioration and failure in every detail.  Tung was well-meaning, confused, indecisive and bumbling – in other words, all too human.  Tsang is robotic, trained to repeat the same processes endlessly and incapable of creative thought.  While Tung collapsed amid disheveled thuds and grunts, Tsang will seize up with much hissing and clattering.  This is how history repeats itself.

“[The Haitians] were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever … And they got together and swore a pact to the devil.  They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’  True story.  And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal’.”

And so, Pat Robertson explains (live!), a bit over 200 years after Haiti’s slaves overthrew their masters with unspecified Satanic assistance (in Bonaparte’s time, actually), God decided to wipe out a large number – maybe 100,000 – of their descendents by grinding some of the planet’s tectonic plates together to produce an earthquake.

The multi-millionaire TV evangelist has also said that the 9-11 terrorist attacks took place because the Almighty was withdrawing His protection from the US owing to the country’s unbridled abortion, homosexuality and other sins.  The same went for Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans (a city settled by white Haitians who had not made a pact with the devil, but, as he says, ‘whatever’).

People who doubt Robertson’s mental health need to bear three things in mind.  First, he has previously stated that anyone who sings John Lennon’s tiresome ‘no religion-no possessions’ dirge Imagine will burn in Hell.  Second, he is a believer in the Illuminati/New World Order, an evil secret global cabal that runs everything behind the scenes; it includes – get this – the family of Hong Kong’s number-one tycoon Li Ka-shing, to whose corporate empire many of us pay more for cartel-provided goods and services than we hand over to the government in taxes.  Third, he believes the European Union is a creature of Beelzebub.  This is a man who knows of what he speaks.

His Christian Broadcasting Network became the first evangelical TV channel available in Hong Kong, way back in 1978, when pretty much the only churches in this city were traditional, lame, peace-and-love, Catholic, Anglican, nonconformist-type places with their cuddly, sandal-wearing deity hugging everyone and understanding their problems.  Since then, the Big Lychee has witnessed the rise of a serious evangelical movement, with its venomous, hate-filled, bullying, terroristic God who demands sacrifices of animals, children and reason just to show who’s boss and smites recalcitrants’ great-great-great-great-grandchildren with natural disasters for good measure.

And it is increasingly well-connected.  Give it another few years and the press release will read: “Hong Kong government expresses support for righteous visitation of plagues of boils and floods of molten brimstone upon the sodomites, harlots and Lucifer-worshiping sons of Ham.”  This is a God for men.

Click for one of George's

Down, down, down in the lowest, darkest depths of today’s Legislative Council meeting agenda, we find two motions put forward by our dedicated and hardworking lawmakers.  The Democratic Party’s Fred Li Wah-ming’s starts:

That this Council seriously regrets that the Central Government has imposed a heavy sentence on LIU Xiaobo for inciting to subvert state power…

If Li had left it at that, he would have put the pro-Beijing members in an embarrassing bind: it would be unthinkable for them to oppose the Central People’s Government by supporting the motion or even abstaining, but by opposing it they would have exposed themselves as people who think a writer deserves 11 years in prison for suggesting the nation’s leaders obey the constitution.  But that’s too simple.  After piling it on for several more sentences, Li has to finish with:

… and the SAR Government should also expeditiously implement dual universal suffrage in Hong Kong…

…giving the pro-Beijing members all the (relatively) relatively excusable reasons they need to vote no.

Li’s fellow representative from Kowloon East, Chan Kam-lam of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment Etc of Hong Kong, proposes that the government do something we can all agree on:

…promote the philosophy of Confucianism to revive the concept of public morality, and strengthen the maintenance of ethical relationship in families to enhance the community spirit of mutual help

…no, that’s not it…

…promote the application of the philosophy of Confucianism to social enterprises and business operations, so as to enhance the humanistic qualities of the public

…ummm, nope…

…introduce in schools and tertiary institutions moral education courses which feature traditional Chinese cultural thinking and emphasize the cultivation of one’s moral character

…no, keep going…

…designate the birthday of Confucius as the Confucius Day to establish the esteemed position of Confucian thinking in the Hong Kong community.

That’s it – a new public holiday!  I’ll vote for that.

Hong Kong’s Civic Party and League of Social Democrats are to go ahead with their ‘referendum’ plan.  Five of the groups’ Legislative Council members will resign in two weeks to trigger a by-election in each geographical constituency, which they will contest by appealing for full universal suffrage in 2012 (or at least, they lamely add, a hard promise of democracy in 2017-21).

The government has two broad options.

It can play it cool, basically ignore the whole thing, and trust that the rest of the population will conclude that the exercise is silly and pointless.  The Democratic Party, the traditional mainstream but increasingly irrelevant and depressing part of the pan-democratic camp, has partly undermined the stunt by refusing to take part.  Low public interest will equal a low turnout, which raises the possibility of pro-Beijing candidates winning some of the races.  So a calm and confident leadership would sit back and carry on with its smooth and competent handling of public affairs as if nothing was happening.

Alternatively, the government can go into panic mode, spark the people’s interest with a whiff of official fear, and set the scene for something much more exciting.  Although genuine universal suffrage in 2012/17/21 is a stale and lost cause, a ‘referendum’ on the government’s popularity could be a hit.  If the pan-democrats have the wit to focus the by-election campaign on the high-speed rail project, property companies’ misleading sales tactics, poor opportunities for the young and a few other lightning rods, a lot of voters might like to turn out to give Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and his sorry band a bloody nose.

The pro-dems probably don’t have the wit to do that, and the government doesn’t have the clear-headedness to damn the referendum project by not even noticing it, so chances are we will end up with everyone coming out of this looking foolish.

This is a pity because if they did get their act together, a resounding victory could await the pro-democrats.  Despite the bland re-hashing of the party line in the government’s 1,049-word statement released late last night, officials are going to be rattled by the referendum plan.  They have much to be nervous about.

The Bow-Tie regime is bogged down, friendless, under siege and generally floundering in a way that gives a warm inner glow to those of us nostalgic for the days of Tung Chee-hwa.  Executive Council member Leung Chun-ying is an enemy within, decrying – if you read between the lines – Donald’s inflexible and outdated bureaucratic mindset, the influence of the property cartel, and the Big Lychee’s increasingly perceived social fracture.

A new ‘post-80s’ group of young radical protestors has joined the ranks of oppositionists crowding round the government’s bunker.  Some genius authorized the arrest and subsequent tattoo-photographing of the starlet of these youth agitators, Christina Chan, as she stepped out of Radio Television Hong Kong on Saturday after giving a radio interview.  The Internet is sizzling with angry politicized teens and students.

A paper being privately circulated by an academic and member of the pro-Beijing Business and Professionals Federation warns in the title that “A storm is coming,” criticizes our leaders for failing the next generation in terms of prospects, quality of life and democracy, and discusses various ‘tipping points’ that could push angry young people to extremes.  Even Monday’s sleep-inducing op-ed column in the SCMP by one Alice Wu lamented the government of a ‘disintegrating community’.

The scene is set, the mood is right, and the opportunity is there to give Donald Tsang his Tung-on-July-1-2003 moment.  Now watch the pro-democrats botch it up.

A weekend visit reveals good news for customers of goods and services in Macau from, surprisingly, the public sector.  Hong Kong ID card holders entering and exiting Sleaze City may now use their very own, specially reserved electronic immigration channels of the high-tech sort they already use going in and out of the Big Lychee.

Needless to say, officials have taken every effort to complicate things:

• You need to authorize the transfer of personal details, fingerprints and photo from the Hong Kong Immigration Department to their Macau counterparts.  You can do this on automated screens after you go through Hong Kong immigration at the ferry terminal.  You put your ID card in, get both thumbs scanned twice, press various buttons on the screen, then get a little printout, which serves no real purpose.
• This transfer takes five working days.  So when you get to Macau on this trip (assuming that’s where you’re going), you still have to line up behind time-wasting dawdlers to show your card to a lethargic human in a uniform.
• After the five working days have passed, you can use the Hong Kong residents’ e-channels to get into Macau.  Unlike our nice, sensible, user-friendly machines, where you stick the ID card into an ATM-style slot, Macau’s require you to slide the card face-down along a ridge onto a glass screen for scanning.  Howls of anguish from first-time users filled the immigration hall this weekend as Hongkongers’ cards failed to activate the system and open the little doors.  The trick – people eventually find – is to slide it across upside down.  (I have devised a rather nifty mnemonic to help people remember this: Mibac, ‘Macau Immigration Bosses Are Cretins’.) The machine issues a disposable slip of paper confirming the right to stay for (in my case) a generous 12 months.

Despite these irritations, the new procedure is a godsend.  Breezing through on the way out is especially welcome, and made all the more enjoyable because you do it in full view of the lengthy lines of Mainland and foreign tourists, clutching their passports and landing cards, and seething with jealousy and resentment.

The bad news for consumers in the plucky little ex-Portuguese enclave is that vendors in the street markets in the Three Candles neighbourhood – their version of Mongkok, basically – have reacted to rising food prices through a type of subterfuge that leaves some shoppers feeling cheated.

At some stage in the past, the fruit and vegetable sellers would have offered their wares by the catty, the traditional measurement equivalent to 600 grams or 1.3 pounds.  Years ago – possibly during an earlier period of price rises – they went metric and started to sell by the half-kilo, ie, 500 grams or 1.1 pounds.  No prizes for guessing what comes next.

They now sell by the pound, or 450 grams.  The English measurement is not unknown in Macau; probably because of the long relationship with the old British colony across the Pearl River Delta, some grocery outlets use it.  But it is new in the street markets, where it is signified by the letter ‘p’ (for pang – as with the succulent pears on the left) rather than ‘lb’.

(‘Lb’, as we all know, comes from the Latin libra, or weight.  The Romans occupied the Iberian peninsula by 150BC, so it is likely that Portuguese were using the pound 200 years before the British did; therefore, you could make a tortuous case for the unit being a part of Macau’s colonial heritage, though I don’t think I would bother.)

The next step for the Three Candles stall holders will, of course, be to start selling things by the half-catty.

A Hong Kong man in late middle age has a flu jab, and soon after is stricken by a side-effect of the vaccine called Guillain-Barre syndrome.  Frightened citizens are taking no chances and are skipping their inoculation appointments.

A sign of herd-like, cowardly irrationality?  No. This is not an isolated, statistically freakish incident of a tragic reaction to the injection.  It has happened before.

Click for 'Madman running through the field'!

Just a few weeks ago another Hong Kong man of a similar age had the vaccination.  Almost instantly he became deranged and insisted that it was necessary to spend HK$67 billion on a 16-mile stretch of rail line.  Yet the good, decent and rational people of the Big Lychee continued to line up for their vaccinations for the good of themselves and the community.

The authorities have not revealed whether this latest victim is gibbering obsessively about using grotesquely astronomical sums of taxpayers’ money to build worthless infrastructure, but who can blame people for being cautious?  Why risk such a truly horrible fate?

You’re not going to stick one of those things in my arm.