 |
| Today’s front page |
What a marker. 100 days of protests. And the Post is right to say “nobody could have predicted…”. We certainly didn’t.
We supported the demos at the outset. We’ve taken part. But like the anti-Article 23 demos of 2003, we thought it was over when the extradition bill was shelved. (反送中). We needed to give some face.
But no they’ve gone on and now every single demo involves violence. Half of the MTR stations vandalised, for goodness sake. Last Sunday 80 petrol bombs. What was once unthinkable in Hong Kong is now a weekly ritual.
So now we do not support them. Of the Five Demands (五大诉求)some are doable, and at least discussable, while some are simply not possible by a wave of the government hand, like the withdrawals of the extradition treaty was.
Universal suffrage, for example, has to be tackled in LegCo and must have final approval by Beijing. That’s not Beijing’s “interfering hands”: it’s in the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s constitution. And releasing all those arrested (1,453) without due process is a breach of the very rule of law that the protesters claim to be upholding.
Continuing to demand immediate redress of the remaining four demands is a recipe for disaster because it will, ultimately, force Beijing’s “interfering hands”, even if not by Tiananmen style brutality.
Not to mention the vast damage to the economy, especially the small and medium enterprises. That’s an irony here. It’s the working class who are most affected by the protesters.
The road to hell…
Meantime Alex Lo suggests caring more about the street cleaners than the rubbish in the streets and caring more about MTR staff than keeping the MTR on schedule. Let people see the results of the mayhem.
We supported the demos at the outset. We’ve taken part. But like the anti-Article 23 demos of 2003, we thought it was over when the extradition bill was shelved. (反送中). We needed to give some face.
But no they’ve gone on and now every single demo involves violence. Half of the MTR stations vandalised, for goodness sake. Last Sunday 80 petrol bombs. What was once unthinkable in Hong Kong is now a weekly ritual.
So now we do not support them. Of the Five Demands (五大诉求)some are doable, and at least discussable, while some are simply not possible by a wave of the government hand, like the withdrawals of the extradition treaty was.
Universal suffrage, for example, has to be tackled in LegCo and must have final approval by Beijing. That’s not Beijing’s “interfering hands”: it’s in the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s constitution. And releasing all those arrested (1,453) without due process is a breach of the very rule of law that the protesters claim to be upholding.
Continuing to demand immediate redress of the remaining four demands is a recipe for disaster because it will, ultimately, force Beijing’s “interfering hands”, even if not by Tiananmen style brutality.
Not to mention the vast damage to the economy, especially the small and medium enterprises. That’s an irony here. It’s the working class who are most affected by the protesters.
The road to hell…
Meantime Alex Lo suggests caring more about the street cleaners than the rubbish in the streets and caring more about MTR staff than keeping the MTR on schedule. Let people see the results of the mayhem.
