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Long Hair and Hemlock

Via Simon, an interesting piece in Slate about ‘Long Hair’ Leung Gwok Hung, by a journalist who also interviewed Hemlock. “Long Hair” feels that the election results were not as bad as they were portrayed:

“The results aren’t a setback for democrats; we won something like 60 percent of the vote. But it was a setback for the democratic party politicians. My argument is, and always was, that democracy needs a platform, an agenda.”

His criticism of the democratic parties’ leadership boils down to two points. First, they didn’t work hard enough to expand their platform and their appeal beyond the abstract issues of suffrage and democratic rule. “If you want to get people to the polls, you have to bloody well give them a good reason why they should cast their vote for you. The democrats sat on top of the political capital they built with the two successful July 1 democracy marches. “

But his biggest criticism of the democratic parties is that they were wimps, doomed to lose against a determined and disciplined group of Beijing-backed adversaries. “The Democrats wanted to avoid confrontation. I told them to attack! They told me they didn’t want to fight. So I have to do the dog-fighting.”

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6 responses to “Long Hair and Hemlock”

  1. fumier avatar
    fumier

    He sounds smarter than the rest of them put together.

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  2. Chris avatar
    Chris

    Oh dear, you must be one of those oiks from the New Territories I’ve been reading about on another blog. No right-thinking people have anything good to say about “Long Hair”.

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  3. Simon avatar
    Simon

    To be fair, he won’t last long if he wants to stay popular. How many revolutionaries joined parliament and lived to tell the tale? In 6 months he’ll get himself kicked out and proclaim himself a matyr for the cause.

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  4. fumier avatar
    fumier

    Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. (Except for the NT bit).

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  5. Ron avatar
    Ron

    In my opinion, what the pan-democratic camp doesn’t realize is that Long-Hair will be a liability for them. Not an asset.
    But Fumier has summarized it nicely. Long-Hair is smarter, because he knows that immaterial of any gig the democrats or anyone can come up with (against the ludicrous Hong Kong government and the policies), there is no real power because Tung and Beijing can veto anything and everything.
    Stalling the government in their (not so carefully thought out) future plans, would frustrate pro-Government and pro-Beijing supporters a lot.
    And that is where Long-Hair seems to step in. However, everyone believes that Long-Hair-Leung won’t last long.
    Next four years will be interesting in that the circus and the fun will continue. Personally, I don’t see much positive developments in next four years. Politically, economically, or otherwise!
    Someone should write a book about Hong Kong. The apt title would be – “Hong Kong – On the Nanjing Road.”
    Cheers!
    PS: Of course the above are just my opinions and views. Hopefully, I stand more chances of being proved wrong.

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  6. Chris avatar
    Chris

    Well, I have difficulty in seeing the pro-democracy camp as anything more than an informal grouping of people with different ideas and objectives. That is both a strength and a weakness, as the election results have shown. Perhaps to get more influence they need to operate in a more unified and disciplined way, but I can’t see that happening!
    So I don’t think “Long Hair” will do much harm to the democratic cause in LegCo, though I also think he will probably become less radical (or at least moderate his actions somewhat) over time. It happens to them all, eventually!
    The bonus for the democrats is that if he did resign from LegCo they could be fairly confident of winning the seat in a by-election.

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