I met Ronny Tong twice. The first time was in March 2010, in a casual conversation event in LSE. The event was supposed to be about the Competition Bill (which did become law the next year), but the Q&A session was all about electoral reform. His views were surprisingly mild: for instance, he did not think his functional colleagues in the LegCo would vote themselves out of relevance for nothing, and a feasible reform bill must somehow placate the interests they represent. Above all, he repeatedly emphasized the need for compromise.
A year and a half later, I saw him again on my way to the local corner shop. He was standing for the district council election in my constituency, at the time when the Civic Party brand has become heavily tainted over the course of the Vallejos right of abode case. He was clearly fighting a losing battle. Rarely did anyone pick up the leaflets he was distributing. A month or two later, he was soundly defeated by the independent incumbent.
Some alleged he was bought or blackmailed by the pro-Establishment camp or their masters. I have proof neither for nor against, but my personal memory is not in line with that conspiracy theory. Instead, I see a consistently moderate democrat who finds himself ever more diverged from his own party, and honourably, followed his party line one last time in a crucial vote before he left the party and resigned his seat. An honourable gentleman who, alas, may not be the most effective politician in these dusky times.
Time will tell if I were misinformed. But Ronny Tong the man is of minor importance now, in comparison to the seat he left behind. The by-election in NT East, where just over a quarter of the electorate is found, will be the first serious test of political support right after the 18th June vote. For the pan-democrats, losing the seat would open the path to irreversible restrictions on filibustering being put in place, further curtailing the limited influence they now have.
But the pan-democrats do not have an easy battle to fight: in 2012, they pocketed 57% of the vote, and that might go down a bit after (how the mainstream media portrayed) what happened over the past year. And a split of that vote is imminent. The localists, having risen to such fame, probably could not resist attempting to prove they are now part of the mainstream - even at the cost of handing the seat to the Establishment under an effectively first-past-the-post system. This by-election could be a real turning point, at which I hope history would fail to turn.
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