Still No Breakthrough

Joshua Wong and Alex Chow lead a small march through Central today

I took some friends from out of town to a foot massage place in Central and as I came out and walked along Queen's Road Central there was a protest march across the street.

Student leaders Joshua Wong Chi-fung and Alex Chow Yong-kang lead the march holding a sign that said they demanded dialogue with China's leaders.

There was some spurts of yellow and people periodically shouting slogans, "I want true democracy", "Hong Kong people want to govern Hong Kong". A few of the marchers carried yellow umbrellas, the real ones or one made of balloons.

At first it looked like a lot of people, but after walking towards the end of the procession I could see it wasn't a very large turnout, over 1,000 at best. The relatively small march was organized by the Civil Human Rights' Front.

Does this mean the Umbrella Movement is wavering? Or poor organization on the part of the Front?

Meanwhile the Federation of Students were outright rejected by former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa in its request for him to help facilitate a meeting between the students and state leaders.

Knowing where Tung stands, it was quite obvious he was going to tow the Party line...

"[Tung] thinks they are just repeating their views and stance in the letter, which won't help break the impasse," his spokesman said. "Mr Tung points out that the central government understands the different views in Hong Kong. The decision of the National People's Congress Standing Committee on August 31 will not change."

Perhaps Tung has become public enemy Number 2 after Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying...

Again Tung is adopting the stance of not even hearing the students out. What is wrong with that? As someone who is considered to have such influence in Hong Kong affairs one would think he would try to find some kind of wiggle room so that the occupation of the streets could end in the short term.

But no -- he shut the door before even hearing their concerns.

So much for being the elderly wise statesman in this situation.

In the meantime it looks like the protesters are digging in deep to wait this out for the next few months. Does Tung think the kids are out camping for fun? Has he even gone there to look at the protest sites for himself and see there are people of all ages there, including those his age and older who also want true democracy?