Don't try to run before you can walk (19 December 2005)

Imagine you are the parent of a young child. One day, that child begins to crawl. How would you react? Would you encourage the child and look forward to the day it will take its first steps, or would you tie the child to a bedpost and announce that you will force it to sit still until it can walk properly?

It is a ridiculous question, of course. Everyone knows that children crawl or shuffle on their bottoms before they walk, and that a child who is forcibly restrained will take even longer to learn to walk.

However compelling the logic of that argument may seem, pan-democratic legislators appear this week to be getting the bailing twine ready to tie the baby of constitutional development in Hong Kong to the bedpost.

The government has put forward a package of electoral reforms that will take us a small but significant step closer to universal suffrage in Hong Kong, increasing both the size of the legislature and the committee that chooses our chief executive. Pan-democratic legislators are rejecting it because they believe it does not go far enough. Some even argue, unfairly, that the package is a step backward.

We in the Liberal Party agree that the reforms are limited, and we appreciate that some people are disappointed that they do not include a timetable for universal suffrage. We support democratisation, and we have already said we would like to see universal suffrage in time for the chief executive election in 2012.

We share many of the same aspirations of the tens of thousands who marched on December 4, and we admire their conviction and their determination. However, we do not believe that blocking any moves towards constitutional development that do not match their agenda is a sensible next step.

We live in the real world and, in order to achieve our goals, we must accept the political reality that our fate is not entirely in our own hands. Beijing, too, plays an important part in the process and it is folly to shut our eyes to this reality. It is also irresponsible to mislead the public, as if this reality does not exist.

On December 4, the people spoke and their voices were heard. However, the voices of those tens of thousands are not the only voices in Hong Kong. There are other voices - more hushed and more self-conscious ones that you may need to strain to hear, but voices that deserve all the same to be heard.

They are the voices of the many thousands of Hong Kong people who say in opinion poll after opinion poll that they support the electoral reforms proposed by the government, even though they realise those reforms may be imperfect and incomplete.

They are the voices of the tens of thousands who believe that the best way to move towards full democracy is to edge towards it at every given opportunity rather than wait to get there in one gravity-defying leap.

These are the voices of the silent majority - the people of quiet conviction who want us to move steadily towards democracy, rather than rush headlong into a confrontation with Beijing by stalling the democratisation process unless we get everything we want.

The decision facing legislators on Wednesday is a hugely important one upon which the future of constitutional development in Hong Kong depends. We must maintain our momentum by edging a little closer to universal suffrage, embracing the opportunity it offers us for more directly elected legislators.

If we insist on staying where we are, hunkering down for a drawn-out stalemate, we risk turning a hopeful infancy of electoral reform into a sickly, immobile child. If that day comes, we will have only ourselves to blame.