Hong Kong: pan-Dem's strategic dillemma

These days most of the commentaries in Apple Daily around the local politics are best described with the Cantonese idiom "打飞机" ( "jerk off" in English ). The front page today looks more like the editotials in WSJ, except WSJ does not do that on its front page, or any page other than the op-ed page. I can almost run Apple Daily in parallel with Wen Hui Pao during the Tung era, if I am allowed to exaggerate a bit.

So it is refreshing to see some independent commentary such as this one, by Lam Kay: 泛民主派的三條戰略問題 (The 3 strategic issues for pan-Dem).

I am one of those who supports their ideal but am totally disappointed by their non-strategy and stupidity - that includes the party organ Apple Daily which is willing to sacrifice the credibility it took so many years to build.

One of the many strategic mistakes by the pan-Dem, as lam Kay rightly pointed out, is that they forgot to do their home work, and were extremely sloppy when it comes to addressing the voters' need, and mis-aligned its target audience with the low income group, who has more imminent problem to worry that long term democracy

• 泛民主派過度集中基層路線，甚至是成立只有一年的公民黨，在政治光譜上都堆在左翼：關心基層市民需要，扶助社會最有需要的一批人，道德上絕對正確；可是泛民可有正視政治現實？香港泛民主派的支持者，有更多屬中產或以上的階層，民意調查結果顯示，愈高學歷的市民，對形而上「民主」的概念支持度愈高；基層人士的數目表面上很多，但不少卻屬於親政府的「死硬派」；然而中間偏右的一群人，目前卻沒有一個泛民政黨可以選擇－－不少年輕的專業人士，政治上沒有鮮明的見解，可是泛民長期忽視這批人的需要，把他們趕到親政府陣營之中。
• the pan-Dem focused too much on the grass-root path......it is absolutely correct to help those who are in need, but has pan-dem faced the political reality?.....poll results showed, the more educated the citizens, the more likely they will support the "democracy" ideal.....the grassroot is large in numbers, but many of them are "die-hard" supporers of the pro-government wing......many young professionals, who are ambiguous in political views, were ignored by pan-dem all these years, and were pushed to the pro-government camp

Politics is also about segmentation, i.e., to maximize vote. This is something the Republicans have some very well in the US. pan-Dem totally failed this test. If democracy is about answering to the majority of the people, why don't they just follow what most people want? Sometimes, the key to success is quite simple.

---

p.s. There is a question I wanted to ask both of these candidate, "would you really open the Lo Wu border for 24 hours?"....and I am wondering why Anthony Leung failed to ask this, when he was accusing Tsang of favouring the property developers.