In political activism, good things come in small packages

Jason Y Ng | 20 August 2014 | South China Morning Post

They used to live in the same residential complex, attend the same school and ride the same bus every morning. They both grew up in devout Christian families and were taught to take an interest in society.

But 17-year-old Joshua Wong Chi-fung and 20-year-old Ma Wan-ki – better known as Ma Jai – can’t be more different from each other. Joshua is a household name and his spectacled face has appeared on every magazine cover. He is self-assured, media savvy and can slice you up with his words. Ma Jai? Not so much. He gets tongue-tied behind the microphone and fidgety in front of the camera. He is a foot soldier who gets up at the crack of dawn to set up street booths and spends all day handing out flyers for someone else’s election campaign.

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Occupy Central accused of ‘disenfranchising’ moderates in vote

Tony Cheung, Tanna Chong | 7 May 2014 | SCMP

Occupy Central’s choice of three reform proposals for a public vote next month risks “disenfranchising” Hongkongers who do not want “confrontation” with Beijing, a group advocating a more moderate plan says.

Occupy supporters met on Tuesday to shortlist three plans for its “civil referendum” on reform for the 2017 chief executive election. But all the plans chosen by the 2,500 people who attended the “deliberation day” allow the public to nominate candidates, which Beijing has ruled out.

The decision sparked concern from five moderate pan-democratic lawmakers and from Hong Kong 2020, the advocacy group set up by former chief secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang.

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Radicals urge public nomination choice on ‘deliberation day’ referendum

Tanna Chong, Tony Cheung | 6 May 2014 | SCMP

Three proposals that push for public nomination of chief executive hopefuls in 2017, an idea already dismissed by Beijing, triumphed in Occupy Central’s third and final “deliberation day” yesterday in a vote on models for a citywide “referendum” on political reform.

Eight relatively moderate proposals, including suggestions by Civic Party lawmaker Ronny Tong Ka-Wah and former chief secretary Anson Chan Fang On-sang’s Hong Kong 2020 think tank, failed to make the cut.

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