The A for ABC

As the Q&A episode continues, more government officials threw their gauntlets in to have their say. The invitation of acquitted terrorist Zaky Mallah to the audience and the subsequent verbal confrontation with Steve Ciobo was a spectacular affair from a programming point of view. However, it is eventually the tsunami of abuse on freedom of speech that makes this saga going down as one of most important issues in Australian history.

Tony Abbott kept questioning whose side ABC was on and demanded “heads to be rolled” regarding this incident. Now it is no surprise or secret the Coalition hated ABC since the John Howard years. The Coalition thinks the ABC is never on their side and thus as soon as the current government came into office cut its budget dramatically as a display of power. The end result was innocent working people, whom the Coalition claimed they represent, lost their jobs because of the cuts. Tony Abbott’s continued assaults against ABC reflected a very serious issue here – the Coalition government is trying to control a public Broadcaster that stands for freedom of speech and turn it into a state broadcaster that only propagates government agendas whether they are good for Australia or not. Mark Scott, the managing director of ABC hits back on Tony Abbott by saying him doing so he is not fending for freedom of speech as ABC and all Australians are standing for but controlling speech in the national broadcaster. Strangely enough Tony Abbott stopped talking immediately but left the issue to his cohorts.

The ironic thing is this is the same bunch of people who wanted to change the discrimination law to enhance freedom of speech because according to George Brandis, the Attorney General, “everyone has the right to bigotry”, and this is what freedom of speech represents. If the right to slander other people publicly is a way to protect freedom of speech why couldn’t the same group of people accept the same on the receiving end? If this government is really about protecting freedom of speech, should everyone representing this government be gracefully accepting this on the other end? Should they be the role model to show to the Australian public that they are the real freedom fighters? Why is it every time when someone criticised them or said something they don’t like to hear they have to bring the wrath of their whole political gangster mob to gun these people down?

At the same time, Tony Abbott praised “The Killing Season” also produced by ABC that chronicled power struggles in the Labor government in the last two terms.  I found this extremely disturbing that a Prime Minister of a country could exhibit this kind of childish and bullish behaviour in the Parliament and be proud of it. The program was not made to appease the Coalition government it was just another piece ABC did. The Labor opposition did not take this opportunity to ask whose side is ABC on and did not question ABC’s motive. The same happened when ABC made a comedy series based on the sitting Prime Minister Julia Guillard at the time. Was Julia happy? No she was not. Did she go on to attack ABC? No she didn’t.

The fact that this Coalition government only wants things that suited their political agendas to be portrayed on TV is a definite indication that these people wanted to have a state controlled broadcaster called ABC not a public broadcaster that helped to shape the society and uphold freedom of speech called ABC. By asking their ministers to pull their appearances from ABC programs this government had rendered itself into nothing but a bunch of narrow minded school yard bullies. Is this what all the hard working Australians deserved? Are we for our freedom or are we for a controlled society that people would shiver just by knowing they have different views from the government. Is this Coalition government ran by a bunch of middle aged to elderly white men (and a few white women) a representation of “white terror” in the modern Australian society?

It is quite obvious the current saga is a public display of power from the Coalition government just like George Bush did in America in the past. If you are not with me you are against me. But if Australia became a society that is only run by Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, George Brandis, Peter Dutton and even Alan Jones, could Australia still be successful in this 21^st century? Maybe they saw the success and rise to power of China so they thought this is the only way to make Australia a new world order power. But is that what all Australians want considering the convict and migrant history of this county that eventually built Australia?

I personally feel jarring that these people who are not the original owners of this land could become so entitled, especially considering people like Joe Hockey who has a strong migrant history – he would not in this country smoking cigar thinking about budget cuts on defence force and a pay rise for himself if his father did not come to this country as a refugee and worked hard. However, as people always say, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is what we are observing in the current Coalition government.

To survive this, we all need to remember the A for ABC is “Australian” not “Abbott”. God bless Australia.

The Brain Tumour of Australian Politics

Another month came and went and the Prime Minister talk still goes on. It is no secret that the current Australian Prime Minister is extremely unpopular. A number of policies introduced along with last year’s budget – which is yet to be passed by the Senate led the government into a nose dive in popularity. A startling contrast to when the Coalition Government went back into office in 2013. Policies such as University fees deregulation, which in my opinion would benefit no one but the already established Group of Eight universities; the Medicare Co-Payment and the sneaky attempt to introduce rebate cuts without consultation; the cuts and eventual layoffs at ABC and SBS, the below inflation rate increase for the Defence Force while MPs enjoy a 7% increase in salary themselves; the non-mean tested parental leave program – they all represent how the Government is completely out of touch with the society while claiming to representing the Australian people. All these fuelled with the Government’s uncompromising stance against climate change, research funding, art funding and bullish ways it exhibited during the Victorian election,  had made the current government one of the most popular in Australian history.

There were leadership spills talks but is it going to happen? It is a time that even backbenchers are not happen while the frontbenchers trying to keep a united front. Tony Abbott has not got much to hang on except for the fact that he can’t be removed or they would become just like the Labor Party whom they replaced and attacked in the past. In fact the promise of a stable leadership and government is only one of the few if anymore, promises the current government has not broken. The Coalition party knows this and this is their last card to draw only in dire situation. The thing is Tony Abbott is now the brain tumour of the Coalition Government. The party room had let this brain tumour grown to a size that is so big that any attempts on surgery could prove to be fatal to the current government. This is not just Tony Abbott, but also all the blood veins attached to the tumour such as Joe Hockey (who said poor people do not own a car or drive very far, and has no understanding about the Australia’s taxation system while being the Treasurer of the country), Christopher Pyne (who said women do not do expensive degrees such as law and thus would not be affected by deregulations); Scott Morris (which thinks he is above all laws when it comes to deal with refugee issues); George Brandis (who has no idea what culture and arts about by relentlessly cutting funding to arts in the country) and the list goes on and on. The truth is if they removed Tony Abbott, all these people will need to go in order to show the government has repented and listened to the Australian public. There will be a lot of bleeding in the government because the question will be “who are going to do these jobs?” The Coalition in the past had been playing the celebrity card instead of credibility card to make them popular and eventually get into the office. The Amy Winehouse Rehab approach (“No no no”) to Labor policies earned them the office in 2013. However, once they used up their popularity there is nothing left and sadly there are no other people trained enough to do those jobs.

So the bottom line is if they removed Tony Abbott they are doing it at high risks. Tony Abbott knows well enough about this as he had made every attempt to disarm any opponents including Malcom Turnbull and Julie Bishop making them the mouthpieces for his unpopular policies. Tony Abbott might look stupid but he definitely knew how to play his game to stay in power. Backbenchers might be unhappy but the frontbenchers are even more scared that such removal would just accelerate the death of the Coalition government and any dashes of hope for getting re-elected will be gone. However at the same time everyone also knew at the current rate the chances of the Coalition government to continue holding office at the next election is minimal, judging what happened in Victoria and Queensland in the last three months. NSW Government is scared. Very scared. As they distanced themselves from the Federal Government as much as possible and put open stances against issues such as GST revisit.

The Prince Philip knighting is perhaps one of the most unconceivable things happened since 2015 started but is it lethal? That still needs time to be proven. However, if Tony Abbott is the brain tumour, this without a doubt represents a haemorrhage that needs to be dealt with in the emergency room. That’s exactly what is happening in the Coalition Party Room. Is Tony Abbott scared? I personally do not think so. He had fulfilled his wish to be the Prime Minister (as he put it when he was still in opposition he would “give his first born for the job”). All he needs to do is to hang on to finish his term. If he failed in the next election, the Coalition comes down, he steps down and that will not be the end of the game for him as he has built up business good will during this Prime Ministership (in how he stands up for the mining industry and put a stop to tax evasion of multinational corporations). He played a spectacular political game that left the rest of his party members in shambles.

The Coalition is definitely in bad shape but in the end it was its own making. They might see Tony Abbott as a potential cancer cell but eventually they let him grew to a size that is not operable and now could possibly only witness its own slow and painful death in a year’s time or so.

Higher Education - Reality or Hoax?

Haven’t been writing this blog for quite a while as I was quite dismayed by the political situations in both Australia and Hong Kong. So I thought I would just shut up and stay objective if possible. However, the recent education bill reform in Australia is another extremely disappointing development for Australia and I find it hard to stay quiet.

Education for me is a basic human right. It is the responsibility of the government to ensure that everyone has a fair share of education to be equipped for the world out there. The recent education bill represents a blatant arrogance, ignorance and an unwelcoming elitist agenda presented by the Coalition Government.

The base argument was to save money, which was already admitted by Joe Hockey, the Treasure that a budget emergency does not exist as claimed.  So that was the first lie underpinning the bill. The argument of by deregulating universities fees it increases the competition in the higher education sector and thus warrant better education for students is totally unfounded. At the moment preference for university is already tightly gripped by the Group of Eight. While in the higher education sector there are already talks around merging regional universities to make them more cost efficient, by deregulating the university fees it will not be the Group of Eight that could be affected but the smaller universities or even the so called Gumtree Universities (universities in the second tier). Power will be further consolidated as smaller universities have to close down because they do not have the same money drawing power as the Group of Eight both in terms of financial income from tuitions and philanthropy. There will only be less university places for general Australians who want a tertiary education, thus further driving up the cost because of demand and supply and guess who would be eventually benefited? For me this is never about students but about a bunch of politicians, who themselves had enjoyed a free education wanting to save money for their annual 7% rise in both salary and pay package while courting the Group of Eight to hopefully get something out of that (maybe a free honor or degree?).The people who are going to be worse off in this change will be students who could not pay the price and who live in regional Australia.

The counter argument about more scholarships for students – well we have seen how Tony Abott’s daughter got a full scholarship without going through any competitive process herself. So where is the guarantee that these scholarships would actually go to the students who actually need them? There was no regulation or legislation to determine how these scholarships should be handed out, there are no KPIs set up for universities to provide evidence for transparent reporting that these money actually went to students in need. Are we just creating a false picture that with more scholarships more students in need will be benefited? Also would there be legislation or regulation telling universities how should the money be allocated across disciplines? Without all these control mechanisms, the money could have well gone to restricted “pal-ish” disciplines and the end results could be smaller faculties that do not have the same influential power would fall victim and be closed down. If that happens how could knowledge and culture in Australia be enriched via our tertiary education system?

Another item I personally find extremely disturbing is the funding towards private college. It has long been arguments that by doing so then people have choices. But then if the government wants public universities to take care of themselves because of funding issues, why is it that private colleges that are supposed to be running as private education businesses be subsidised by tax payer money? If they want to run a private business, disregarding the nature of the business, they should always take their own risks and not receive any tax payer money. Tax payer money should always be reserved for public universities who have the duty to provide basic tertiary education. If parents think they want to send their kids to private colleges, it is up their ability to pay the tuition no matter how much it would cost them. Having my tax money allocated to private businesses for their own business interest is, in my opinion, a violation of trust as a tax paying citizen of this country. I do not know how much connection Chris Pyne, Tony Abott or other cohorts of the Coalition government have with the private education business, but this kind of move proposing funding private education businesses using tax payer money does smell rats for me. And the whole scenario of public universities needs to take care of themselves but we are extending funding to private colleges running as private businesses is condescending, contradictory and hypocritical.

I am glad that bill had been voted down but the worry is that Chris Pyne did not see the flaws and hypocrisies in his bill (or maybe he did but doesn’t care) and determines to push forward. Imagine an Australian society that only elitist groups could enjoy tertiary education no matter they are fit for such education or not, what would it be like? It will not be hard to find out once such a self-interested bill is being passed and I hope I would not need to see this within my lifetime. 

Tax, Jets, and Another Week

There is something I sometimes failed to comprehend. When I was living in Hong Kong I paid tax honestly every year. It is not a small amount considering my income but then I was happy to do so as I do think it is the duty of a responsible citizen. Also the great thing was that you know exactly where the tax money went. We got great healthcare system, great infrastructure such as an efficient rail and underground transport system and a great education system. So you know that at the end of the day your citizen duty paid off, not just for yourself but for the rest of the society too. Hong Kong may not be a democratic state but things were done properly in terms of using taxpayers’ money.

Fast-forward to now, I am living in Sydney and continued to fulfill my citizen duties. However, I have never felt as disappointed and lost with my money spent as before. Australia is a great country with great resources and it is a great place to live in. However, sometimes I do think that the democracy that we have is not serving the Australians justice they deserved. I am not saying democracy is bad and I do believe that some of our fellow Australians do think that the current government is a government they want. But then for me what I question is “Is this the government that is suitable for modern Australia?” I keep hoping that the answer would be yes but I do have a hard time to articulate that “y” word from my mouth.

Today we were informed of the Abbott’s government’s intentions of introducing a debt levy on the back of a promise of there will be no new taxes during his office. I was disappointed, not because of the new tax but because of what we have as a government. If there is a real need yes, I do think we should all pull in the weight to support a new tax. However what we saw in the past few months were repeated iteration of cuts in education and healthcare, the threatening of reducing funding for ABC and SBS because there is simply no money. Of course the reason was because of the previous government, as it is never the Liberals’ fault when they could not manage the books. And then last week, it was announced that the government would spend $12.4 billion to acquire some super fighter jets from the States. Abbott claimed it would be good for the economy.

Now personally, I do not see how spending $12.4 billion on fighter jets while claiming no money for education, health and cultural development is “good for the economy” I mean at least at that time. But now I start to understand why – because then they can introduce new tax to finance the spending and turn around saying, “See how good we manage the books”. The thing is this debt levy is for people who earn between $80,000 and $180,000 a year. Most of these people are already the middle group in the society who are actively financing everything in the society. They got penalized with tax extra if they do not have private medical insurance, they represent most of the highest tax rate contributors and they received the least, if not zero, government benefits. What is happening here is that the Liberal bunch of wealthy friends is right outside of these brackets. So they were not being affected while at the same time enjoying other benefits such as a new carbon price subsidy “to encourage the reduction of carbon emission”. If that is good for the economy I certainly failed to see how.

What disappointed me most is that everything sounded so legitimate from the Abbott government’s point of view. Think about that $12.4 billion they are going to spend on fighter jets. Are they necessary? Surely if there is a need to use it but then if someone needs to fly all the way down to the ass of the world to invade Australia, that country must really have nothing to do or must have conquered all other parts of the world and there is nothing left for it. If the levy is going to subsidize schooling and a better healthcare system that’s fine, but for fighter jets? Really? And then you have no money to finance a national broadcasting service when you can spend an amount of money on trophies in a hanger that is sufficient to fund ABC for the next 9 years? I can’t help but think what is wrong with this government?

I might sound angry but I am not. I am just extremely disappointed. There is no point of getting angry with this government because anger could cause health issues that I might not be able to afford to deal with because the government has no money for healthcare. If democracy were actually for the well being of its people, I personally want to see this happening, and I hope it would happen soon.

Freedom - Relative or Absolute?

Have been avoiding writing this blog because the last election result was so disappointing that I was quite sure I would not be able to maintain my neutrality. The last thing I want to see is my blog becoming one condemning piece after another. However there always comes a time that you know you have to start writing again because you are compelled to do so by your good conscience.

With the current Australian government personally I think things have gone from bad to worse. Sometimes it is hard to comprehend that this is what the general Australians think a government we deserved but voila, this is what we got stuck with at least for the next few years.

One of the most disturbing things I feel about is their use of freedom as a relative word. They championed themselves as freedom fighters and it has been deployed as the main reason behind the proposed change of the Racial Discrimination Act. The advocacy of George Brandis saying everyone has the right to be bigotry had raised a lot of people's eye browse. When the proposed changes were announced, my first question was "Why do a bunch of upper middle class White Australians think they understand racial discrimination and thus can change the Act when in their whole life had never been on the receiving end of such acts?" That is something I still have no answers to. The proposed change was to protect the freedom of speech and expression but was it for everyone or just for some?

Surely under such change I should be able to call Tony Abbott and George Brandis upper class trailer trashes who know nothing about the modern Australian society. But then am I really free to do so? I am not quite sure.

Take the recent threats the current government has on ABC about cutting their funding because in more than one occasion Tony Abbott said they should do more for the home team but ABC failed to do so. The fact that the current Government questions the existence of ABC because it is not churning out propagating materials for Tony Abbott and his gang directly contradicts to the basic act of freedom of expression and speech. To think about this if ABC can only survive because they became a propagating machine, what is the difference between the Abbott government and other totalitarian states that they condemned against regularly? Do they still have to rights to hail themselves as freedom fighters?

Another case is the threat of future legal actions on artists who pulled out of the Sydney Biennial Festival because of their political differences on asylum seekers issues. George Brandis said artists should be liable for these actions as they jeopardised the Festival despite their contempt that a guy whose company was running the detention centres chairs the Festival. I do not know how close the relationship of this guy is with George Brandis, and I do not know what legal obligations these artists have with the Festival. What I can assume is that these artists have checked their agreements and knew that it was within their rights to do so before pulling out. Is this good for the Festival? Certainly not. Is it their right to express their contempt? Certainly is. So if that is the case and the government want them to be litigated, is that a violation of the basic right to freedom of speech and expression? I certainly think so.

For me freedom should not be dealt with in a fluid relative term. This is what totalitarian authorities do. Freedom, if you do have the real heart to upkeep should be dealt with in an absolute social term - is it good for the society? If one thinks that people have the absolute right to be bigotry, then people should also have the absolute right to condemn such bigotry, disregarding where it's funding comes from. People should also have the freedom to pull out of events due to differences in political views within their contractual agreements. If freedom is not protected in this way, then it is not real freedom and thus enters an age of true hypocrisy. And in my opinion, this is the age most Australians are living in at the moment.

The Perfect Political System

Recent events in Australian politics had put me off writing social opinion pieces. Not that I have become less opinionated, but I just feel like I couldn’t be bothered anymore. The disappointment on both sides of the so-called Australian politics was just too overwhelming. However one of the discussions at tonight’s ABC’s “Q and A” got me thinking about something – is there really a perfect political system? Is politics ever meant to be for the benefit of the society?

These questions came about when they discussed about how China refuses to change politically but embraced western economic systems with open arms. They questioned how this is possible and whether this is, to an extent responsible. Now there is no doubt that China has become the core of the global economy. A lot of things, if not everything, are hinged on the Chinese market. When Deng Xiaoping opened up China economically, there was never an intention to change its core political ideology. This is why we have what we now called the June 4 Incident. The greatest concession China ever made was to establish the “One Country Two Systems” first with Hong Kong then with Macau. Even that, the autonomy is not complete and there were tensions from time to time over ideological controls.

People might condemn the political practice in China, but one thing I think a lot of people were never aware of was that China never really had a prolonged history of democracy. The Kuomingtang (KMT) Government was short-lived and corruption ridden, which I personally do not think left a good impression on the people of China at that time. Otherwise the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would not have a chance to undermine them during the war against Japan, which eventually led to the civil war and the KMT fled to Taiwan. So strictly speaking, China has been mostly under dynastic rules of successive kings and then a one party rule of the modern government. The good part of this is that things get done. I personally do not think the Great Wall of China would come into being if it were under democratic rules. No matter how much people criticised the Communist Party, they did get things done and brought China back up from the “Slicing of the Chinese melon” status to now a major player in international politics. This is the strength of single power rule. Similarly, Hong Kong never had real democracy under the British colonial rule. And at that time lots of things got done and Hong Kong evolved from a small fishing village to now a economically important metropolitan. Looking at now, with people throwing bananas in the semi-democratic Legislative Council, councillors seemed to have lost sight of what they were supposed to do.

These kinds of issue do happen in the western democratic establishments. The recent Australian election was just a farce of who is going to be voted out rather than which capable person is going to be voted in. There is no doubt that Labor lost because people wanted to vote them out and the Coalition won because people wanted to vote the Labor out. Tony Abott is not a popular choice to represent Australia with his “suppository of knowledge” and his decision to shy away from “Q and A” to debate with Kevin Rudd but appeared on “Big Brother” to talk up the hotness of his daughters. Democracy as great as it sounds, at the end of the day is just another tool of the privileged few. This was further proved last week when the American Government was shut down because the Republicans were playing their political games. These politicians, under the banner of democracy were supposed to seek benefit for the general public they claim to be representing. However, the government shut down saga exposed that all they cared about were their own power at the expense of average families getting paid so they could pay their bills.

Another common thread in all political systems is the act of corruption. We always hear about how corrupted in China is because of the one party rule. There is no doubt about that. The system has become so nepotic that it is virtually a family and good friends business. However one thing people tend to forget is that corruption exists in western democracy too. Australian political scene is constantly marred by corruption from council to state levels. Australia might have better systems to detect and litigate corruptive acts but if they think they are better than developing countries and non-democratic entities, they are just see the spike in other people’s eyes without seeing the logs in their own.

Of course there is the issue of oppression and persecution that were commonly exposed under single power systems.  The Cultural Revolution would always be remembered and not to mention stories from Iran, Iraq, Syria and North Korea. However, does that mean under democratic rules there would be no persecution and oppression? I personally do not believe so. These practices still happen but unlike the red terror that involves blood, under democracy it became things that played out in courts or during parliamentary sessions where people expose each other’s dark secrets to shut other people up. Maybe the pen is mightier than the sword, but in politics both are equally deadly.

To be honest I do not have an answer to what political system is better. For me if Adam and Eve were not left to their own device, we could still be enjoying free lunches in the Garden of Eden instead of working hard to pay our bills. So it seems right from the beginning mankind is not capable of self-governing. God might have given us a brain to figure things out and thus all those political ideologies and system, but maybe at the end we still need a divine intervention to set us straight. Could this be global warming? I don’t know. But the question is if this divine intervention arrives, where could we go? As we are no longer living in any paradise anymore.

Hong Kong - 16 Years On

On 1 July 1997 Hong Kong was finally returned to the People’s Republic of China and thus ended 150 years of British colonial rule. It was a big day for China and a mixed one for the Hong Kong people. I was not there at that time because I preferred to keep myself distanced from this whole thing and went overseas to Hawaii for the sunshine and beaches. Nonetheless, I still watched the broadcast on CNN. I also spoke on the phone with my parents. That year that day, the sky was pouring torrential rain in Hong Kong and everything was drenched. I was joking about that with my parents saying that even the heavens were mourning over the change.

16 years onward, 1 July is still a day of mixed feelings for a lot of Hongkongese. This year under the torrential rain brought by a potential typhoon attack, around a 100 thousand people took it to the streets to voice their discontent with the current political situation. This is the 10th year for the 1 July demonstration. I personally had not participated in anyone of them as I moved overseas not long shortly after the handover. I was in need for an identity I could identify myself with. However this does not mean I care less (or couldn’t care less) about Hong Kong. I still have family and friends there and I still make regular visit to this Pearl of the Orient.

A lot of people continued to ask me whether Hong Kong has changed since the handover. My usual reply is “how could there be no change?”  Hong Kong was promised with 50 years of political stability and a status of autonomy through the establishment of the Special Administrative Region, and China seems to be keeping its promise. However, there were subtle things in the past 16 years that still triggered the nerves of the Hong Kong people. One of them was the progress for democratisation. The people of Hong Kong have been fighting for greater autonomy through a more progressive movement for democratisation, especially the ability to choose its own Chief Executive. However, the pace has been lacking and the discontent against this has grown with time. The fact is Hong Kong never had democracy and was doing very well, so why fighting for it now?

Personally, I think this reflects the continued distrust of the Hong Kong people with the Chinese government.  The irony is that in my opinion the Chinese government has been extremely tolerant with what is happening in Hong Kong and in fact has been pouring resources into Hong Kong to keep this place vibrant. So what cause this distrust prevailing in Hong Kong? One of the reasons I could think of was that China has never recovered from the image it established during the “June 4 Incident” in 1989. Certainly, there were already a few generations of leaders since then, but from the Hong Kong people point of view (probably also some international politicians too), it was a public display that the Chinese authority could turn hostile at any time and the only way to secure a stable and free future is to have democracy in Hong Kong.

Another reason for this fight for democracy was the incompetence of the current Hong Kong Government to present itself as autonomy. There were three Chief Executives since the handover so far and none of them was able to make the Hong Kong people feel “secure”. The first Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa proved to be incapable of governing despite earning the good wills of the Chinese authorities initially. Donald Tsang, an ex-government official who succeeded him was initially seen as a “Hong Kong local”. However, his background as an ex-colonial official and his position of being torn between the pro-China and pro-Hong Kong sectors exhausted his ability to govern. Further the later scandals about potential corruption had further tarnished his reputation as the Chief Executive. The latest and current Chief Executive CY Leung has long been regarded as the brown nosing kid for China who couldn’t be trusted. Further his dirty tactics during the “election” against Henry Tang and his repeated lies about his wrong doings uncovered by the media had further eroded people’s respect for him across the territory. However, in my opinion, the major concern for the Hong Kong people was that they did not exactly see these Chief Executives as their representatives to the Chinese authority. This is because they were elected by a small circle up high and the Hong Kong people never had a chance to choose.

For me being able to choose the Chief Executive of Hong Kong is a comforting move that the Chinese authority failed to see. It is not just about democracy but about the feelings that the Hong Kong people have. Simply able to choose who represents could them could make them feel that at least they were being heard. However, from the Chinese authorities’ point of view, they do not want to see anyone from the democratic camp to win the general election and become a sore in the eye for them. But what the Chinese authority failed to see is the great pacifying effect that a general election could bring to Hong Kong. The fact is once this aspect is being satisfied, Hong Kong would be a lot more stable and this could only work to the advantage of the Chinese government both economically and politically. This is not about ideology but practicality. At the end of the day, quality golden eggs could only be laid by a goose that is happily satisfied with life.