明天的港台荚文信Happy Mother’s Day
It is hilarious that mothers began to enter into the recent political reform debate on the question "pocket or not pocket". Executive Councilor Bernard Chan was asked by a yum cha lady during his turn to go for street campaign: "If your wife was chosen by the Central Government, what would you do?" Chan answered by saying this is the same as my Mother choosing for me!!! This reminded me of the time of the Cultural Revolution when Chinese were told Mao Sze Dong was dearer to you than your Mother. Bernard Chan without thinking became Red Guards that waved the red little book at his Mother. Legislative Councillor Ng Leung-Sing representing the banking sector went further and said that over thousands of years in China Mothers had chosen the wives for their children. This is the Banker legislator who wanted to return Hong Kong to the feudal days of China that practiced blind marriage and think this is acceptable.
It was funny but also very sad that educated people in Hong Kong can bend so low as to refer the Communist Party as their Mother and is willing to give up the right to choose one's own wife. This led me to think of a more philosophical reason for not pocketing the political reform package imposed on us by the Chinese Communist Party. Hong Kong People should not degrade oneself to accept lies. This is the struggle of living in truth against living in lies and this is the struggle of life and death for the survival of Hong Kong and our value system of speaking out for truth. Living in truth is the central theme of the famous essay "Power to the Powerless" by Havel, the playwright dissident turned President of the first Democratic Czechoslovakia. Rereading this essay make us understand what the fight over true democracy is all about. This is how Havel described the Communist System:
“Government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his or her ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary use of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.”
Isn't this happening in Hong Kong today?It is here that Vaclav Havel makes one of his most compelling points about living within the Communist system:
Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, ARE the system.”
If we accepted the lies of the Government that passing the proposed political reform package with the 1200 so called elected representatives controlling the nomination process is a step forward and is a fulfillment of the promise of universal suffrage, we as the individuals are confirming the system and are the system. Also to quote Havel: a regime can lull its underlings at worst and convert them at best to “the cause”. And what, is “the cause”? Power… indisputably and unflinchingly secure in the hands of the regime. This is what exactly the Hong Kong Government is doing, to convert all of us to the Cause of securing power for the Regime.
To “live within the truth” is to defy the unreality – in big ways, or in small. Havel’s example of a green-grocer organizing an underground group, or simply not putting a propaganda poster in his window is excellent. There is no shortage of fear (or brutal consequence) under these regimes and Havel admits this with sympathy. At the same time, he reinforces that fissures in the edifice of lies can come in big forms or small – and no small act of “living within the truth” is without its impact on the oppressive regime. Havel reinforces the threat of “living within the truth”:
“By breaking the rules of the game, [the citizen living within the truth] has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it IS possible to live within the truth.
It is our choice: truth or lies. We are already the fortunate one to be living under communist rule with a makeshift shelter of one country two system. We must defend this shelter by starting to live in truth and not accepting blind marriage by mothers.
Mothers have no desire but the goods for their children and comparing mothers to the Central Government is nauseating. Let us live in truth and believe in our mothers.
Lee Cheuk Yan
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