Opinion | Hong Kong needs democracy realists, not dreamers
Michael Chugani says democracy dreamers need to realise calls for the NPC ruling to be overturned and Leung to go are impossible demands
We all know how it started. Does anyone know how it's going to end? No. Occupy Central organisers who initiated the civil disobedience have become side acts. The students who turned the Occupy movement into an uprising won't end it unless their impossible demands are met. Democracy camp legislators dare not march out of step with the students. And the Leung Chun-ying administration has retreated into its bunker.
But I do know one thing: Forget about a happy ending. The script that's been played out so far leaves no room for it. Our best hope is a face-saving ending for all sides. Even that won't happen if the students stick to their impossible demands now that Leung has delegated Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to negotiate with them.
There are dreamers who still think people power will triumph with Beijing ditching Leung and rescinding the National People's Congress framework for reform. To these dreamers I urge: wake up, please.
The Communist Party is never swayed by people power. It crushes it at home and scorns it elsewhere. The only power it understands is its own power, some of which it will trickle down to the people if that poses no risk. Our democracy dreamers have never come to terms with this. For Hong Kong's sake, they need to become democracy realists rather than dreamers.
Realists understand who they are dealing with. That's what separates them from the dreamers. The realists among us know Leung won't quit in disgrace and the NPC won't back down. It is the inability of our dreamers to accept that Beijing calls the shots that has put us where we are today.
Is it really so hard for the dreamers to understand why Beijing will never give in? Let me explain it in simple terms. Firing Leung, nullifying the NPC decision, and then allowing public nomination for Hongkongers to elect their own leader with no input from Beijing amounts to virtual self-rule rather than a high degree of autonomy. It is not hard to imagine virtual self-rule evolving into an independence movement, at least in the mind of Beijing.
