Suffrage? Save It Till We’re Dead
July 8th, 2007People who admire an institution such as an art gallery or a hospital and want to work selflessly to assist it often form themselves into a group and call themselves ‘Friends of’ what ever the outfit is. The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong could, if all that was not enough, subtitle themselves, “Friends of the Communist Party in Hong Kongâ€.
And they do work hard for the Party not letting consistency of all things stand in their way but this week they fell short. They said that election of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage from a slate of previously sieved candidates should not now take place until 2017- at least.
What they really should have said was 2117. By then, we will all be dead which is very much more in the spirit of the Basic Law and what I imagine Beijing really, really wants. 2017 is pretty close to that for a lot of us anyway. Push it farther away, make it more mortally hopeless and we’ll sure as hell give up.
I have a quick tip for the DAB in the spirit of gradual progression. Take a leaf out of European nineteenth century enfranchisements and make the suffrage available only to men. Never thought of that little spoiler, did you?
If you want an easily grabbed justification for that position, I refer you to the ‘I’m Not a Plastic Bag.†issue debacle outside a Central shop last week. For an accidental and almost ironic piece of designer label rough trade, a crowd of mostly women lost their reason in a bad tempered sort of way. ‘Bitchy’ covers it nicely. To the “Friends†I suggest an open and shut case.
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