Hong Kong democrats have given up their moral high ground – and now there’s no turning back
John Chan says ideals have been exchanged for realpolitik after they threw themselves into trying to sway an election they once rejected as illegitimate
To those who have been watching local politics closely over the past two decades, one of the most notable changes among mainstream pan-democrats has been their shift from political pragmatism to idealism.
At the change of sovereignty 20 years ago, there was unanimous acceptance that the undemocratic political structure we inherited from the colonial era was far from ideal, but there was an unspoken consensus that, given time, it would be changed.
The change the democrats expected – that political reform would usher in universal suffrage for both the chief executive and Legislative Council elections – failed to materialise. Disillusionment set in, and mainstream pan-democrats abandoned their path of achieving universal suffrage step by step. Instead, they opted for an all-or-nothing approach, dismissing gradual reform through compromise as a betrayal of their ideals.
Stagnation in electoral reform and the resultant lack of a mandate for the chief executive has been the core reason for pan-democrats’ refusal to cooperate with Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying and his government over the past five years.
