Rear Window: You run, I follow

Severo Portela

As the ‘dust’ settles in Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok, pepper spray dissolves into thin air and the umbrella protests come to an end, only to revive again and again. We guess it’s time to at least try to evaluate the outcome of over two weeks of direct social action by students under Federation or Scholarism, and the pro-democracy mix, Occupy Central. Do forgive us for not going into the more public violence, be it minimal, appropriate or excessive force.
Writing from the opposite border of the Pearl River Delta, we first look to the Macau Special Administrative Region to underline the fact that, contrary to some catastrophists, local students and pro-democracy enthusiasts did not run a copycat action. Macau pro-democracy circles restricted themselves to nothing more than a mere demonstration of solidarity as an immediate and sympathetic echo of the Hong Kong demonstrations. And they did so, not because they are mature or sensible enough to be encouraged by fellow Hongkongers’ antics to make a true universal case for suffrage, but because the MSAR’s Basic Law is…different, as are the demographics, the economics, the statistics.
More than this, Macau is on its way to MSAR’s 15th anniversary, an event that opens a new and decisive political cycle, distinguished by the presence of President Xi Jinping.
No wonder that the antiestablishment feelings of local youth have been funneled towards less spectacular objectives, when so much is at stake in the coming 4th quinquennium. But no one should be mistaken about Macau’s new generations and more liberal sectors: the longing for democratic improvement is the same in both SARs.
Now, after establishing, or rather realizing that Macau students and liberals will not copy the behavior of fellow Hongkongers, we have to stress what seems to be the core of the social movement challenging CY Leung, the Liaison Office, and the Chinese Government. To quote the insight of wellknown commentator Stephen Vines, writing in ‘Next’ magazine, “even the most optimistic protestor appreciates that not only could these demonstrations be crushed, but the cause of democracy will be set back, possibly for generations.”
That is, everybody knew that the yellow umbrella protests were doomed to fail, so that is not the point. Apparently, umbrella action aimed only to have CY Leung discuss constitutional matters face-to-face; Leung himself, at the boiling stage of the protests, resorted to an invitation to dialogue around constitutional matters. One would say it was a match made in heaven when both camps appeared ready to talk to each other, but appearances can be deceptive.
While dialogue may sound like a good option for many, neither CY Leung nor ‘Occupy’ could have anything substantial to say to each other. The CE was bound to the NPC ruling on the electoral figurine, outside whose frame he would be swimming in forbidden waters. The Umbrella activists could not buy into an offer of a few places in the electoral committee, because they would then be endorsing the unacceptable small-circle electoral system.
Let us put it in another light. Leung could offer a way out to the students opening the small-circle and keeping the pre-screening of candidates for 2017; while activists could exchange or replace the demands on electoral methods by the erasure of anachronistic functional constituencies in Legislative Council. That is the real target.
Attentive central authorities (Chen Zuo’er) seemed to put this idea to sleep through a surrogate conflict between demonstrators who read themselves as umbrella protesters inside the system, and the reading of Occupy Central, Scholarism and the Federation of Students as a color revolution. Umbrella people look more like a Moisés Naím new social group aiming for nothing more than particular interferences and small-scale disturbances, and authoritative Beijing handles the situation with the ‘rule of law’ and the threat of prosperity nuisance. Who is running? Who is following?