Monday, September 15, 2014

The Great Pretender

Former Secretary for Justice Elsie Leung, now Deputy Director of the Basic Law Committee, said a couple of days ago that "People wish to have universal suffrage in 2017, and they should not be deprived of their chance".

No argument with that, but then she turned stupid: "When you label it as true or false universal suffrage I think it's meaningless.  I mean you can't say that just because it's not the same as what I want and [sic] therefore it's not true universal suffrage".

I don't believe for one moment that Elsie Leung is too simple-minded to understand the difference between an election allowing voters to select from a range of candidates representing a wide spectrum of political viewpoints, and one where the choice is between 2 or 3 identikit candidates all effectively handpicked by the Chinese Communist Party.  In other words, she is pretending not to understand the difference with the intention of reducing a serious divergence on political principle to a mere question of personal preference, like the choice between Pepsi and Coke.

Leung is playing the fool for political advantage, and she wants you to be fooled too.  Don't be.

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