Why does Tai spread lies?
Benny Tai Yiu-ting has been using his academic titles to spread lies since he published the “Occupy Central” mumbo-jumbo in a bid to deceive Hong Kong residents and recently spat out another piece of nonsense that accuses the central government of writing “bounced checks” to further insult Hong Kong residents’ intelligence in addition to slandering the central authorities.
According to Tai’s logic, the Basic Law promises universal suffrage for Hong Kong as early as 2007 and in 2012 if it fails to materialize in 2007, which means the central government failed to deliver its promise twice.
The Basic Law indeed stipulates that Hong Kong will eventually implement universal suffrage, but there is no mention of a timeframe for the process. The Appendix I and Appendix II of the Basic Law spell out how the first-term and second-term Chief Executives and the first-term and second-term Legislative Council (LegCo) should be produced, but not how the CE and LegCo would be returned from 2007 onward. The only thing certain in the Basic Law is that any amendment to the appendixes must go through a legislative process according to relevant law. That means a decision should be made before the year 2007 as to whether it is necessary to amend the two appendixes concerning how the CE and LegCo should be returned in 2007 and beyond. The decisionmaking process is also known as “constitutional review”. However, a review can find an amendment necessary or unnecessary. Either way there is no ground for assuming there is a timeframe for implementing universal suffrage.
Hong Kong’s democratic development must proceed according to the Basic Law, which says it needs to proceed in accordance with Hong Kong’s actual condition in a gradual fashion. By actual condition it means the Hong Kong society as a whole must be well ready for the impact of such a constitutional advancement. Without broad consensus on how it will be implemented, a sudden leap to universal suffrage can be devastating to the economy as well as politics.
The truth is Hong Kong society has always been divided over how soon universal suffrage should be implemented. On Feb 20, 2004, Sir Gordon Wu Ying-sheung published an article in Ming Pao with the headline “Universal Suffrage Will Weaken Hong Kong for 10 Years”. It reflected the worries of many businesses about the impact of hurried universal suffrage in Hong Kong. Deng Xiaoping also made it clear quite early on that “if universal suffrage is to be implemented, it must follow a gradual process one step at a time.”
The central authorities fully considered Hong Kong’s popular opinion before deciding to allow amendments of the two appendixes of the Basic Law concerning how the CE and LegCo should be returned in 2007 and 2008 respectively to pave the way for the implementation of universal suffrage. Had the “pan-democracy” camp not tried to pork-barrel its own demands to the 2012 constitutional reform plan back then, the outcome might have been quite different. The opposition camp alone is to blame for the setback and Tai has no reason whatsoever to fault the central government.
Tai claimed that he had to play the bad guy by planning for “Occupy” because the central authorities failed to deliver its “promise” twice. Does he have no shame in trying to justify such lies? And he is delusional enough to believe his threat can work.