What sort of a 'choice' is that?

My wife showed me the flyers she collected from some travel agents, flyers promoting the packages we could buy for the Easter trip we have been yearning for.

I took a quick glance and put them aside. She had told me about our choices over the phone so I knew what to expect. Singapore, Taiwan, or a zoo in China. I do not want to be a killjoy, and I know full well how much she would like to get away for the holiday, but how interesting are these places? We have been to Singapore and seen how the place is not worth another visit. Visiting Taiwan is probably no different from staying home, so why bother? The zoo in China? To give it some weight, my wife said even her choosy friend has found that zoo it to be good. But the problem is that it is a zoo – a place where treatment of animals is always a contentious issue. And in China, no less.

“But what other choices do we have?” she asked.

She has a point. With just two weeks from Easter, most other packages may have been booked up. But the key question is, are we then forced to lower our standard and choose from something we know is not quite acceptable?

And this is exactly what has been happening in Hong Kong lately, or not so lately actually. The problem has been so starkly reviewed in that “election” for the next Chief Executive. Only 1,200 people have the right to choose from the disgraceful candidates who have been mired into one scandal after another. These are the “choices” that China has meted out to us. What is disappointing is that Hong Kong people seem to have resigned to acceptance of  the situation. But are these really our only choices? Do we have to choose them?