In response to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress’ Tuesday decision to plug a potential legislative vacuum in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region caused by the postponement of the seventh Legislative Council election by allowing incumbent lawmakers to continue their duties for at least a year, the 22 LegCo members from the opposition camp said in a statement they would gauge public opinion first before deciding whether they will participate in the extended LegCo session. Understandably, they felt the need to engage in some kind of political posturing, as they always do.
But if they genuinely respect the public will, as they have claimed, the ultimate decision will be that they respect the decision of the nation’s top legislature and work together with the SAR government in containing the COVID-19 pandemic and pushing for an early recovery of the local economy. These are undoubtedly the top priorities of Hong Kong society at this moment, when the raging third wave of the pandemic outbreak is threatening the health and lives of its residents; small and midsize businesses are fighting strong headwinds to keep themselves afloat; and households are struggling to make ends meet amid a 15-year-high jobless rate as the local economy is hobbling through its worst predicament in more than a decade.
The only alternative, which is essentially the continuation of their antagonism against the central authorities, is a political nonstarter. It would be the best way to marginalize themselves and eventually make them irrelevant in Hong Kong.
If the experience of political wrangling over the past several years is anything to go by, political radicalism could only leave Hong Kong in limbo, aside from hindering political reform and democratic advancement.
The whole opposition camp has been hijacked in recent years by the radicals who believed they could achieve their political objectives — no matter how unrealistic and unconstitutional those objectives are — by leveraging foreign interference and making use of threats and violence. The moderates in the camp should now accept the reality that political radicalism didn’t work and won’t work in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, which can withstand any amount of foreign pressure. With the introduction of the National Security Law, the space for political extremism has been further squeezed; the “burn together” gang has no future at all. This is the right time for the moderates in the opposition camp to distance themselves from the radicals and remain relevant in Hong Kong.
