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While English is not my first language, I am confident that the word "allegedly" does not mean what journalists on the politics beat at the South China Morning Post think it means. Writing as late as Aug 2, the SCMP's Jeffie Lam was still saying that "The millions of dollars Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai Chee-ying has allegedly donated to pan-democrats may be only the tip of the iceberg of the financial backing city politicians get." Putting it that way, he might as well also have written "the alleged tip of the alleged iceberg."

We have almost a thousand portions of leaked documents, including cashier's orders and so on, the authenticity of which nobody has challenged. Lai admitted to giving out the money, almost with pride. After Leung Kwok-hung and Lee Cheuk-yan finally gave up their futile attempts to deny receiving money from Lai and apologize for "mishandling party funds", everything in the documents now adds up: We know exactly who was paid what, by whom.

What Lai did was not illegal under Hong Kong's law, but it is highly immoral. However, supporters of Lai still wrote to the South China Morning Post asking: "Why is it only pan-democrats who are the target of a funding probe? We all know that Jimmy Lai Chee-ying is a big pan-democratic supporter." This suggests that Hongkongers are so fixated with the label of "democracy" that they no longer have the ability to assess the world objectively and critically.

Any sensible Hongkonger with a keen interest in local affairs and the well-being of Hong Kong society in mind would wonder why all these funds had to flow through Mark Simon, a foreigner. Lai has been criticized for using Simon, an American who once worked as a Pentagon analyst, as his chief political assistant in Hong Kong. One wonders why he can't assign the job to another less controversial figure.

Allegations of foreign involvement are also underscored by photographs of Lai on a visit to Myanmar last year, where he and former US deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz were pictured together at a meeting with its recently rehabilitated military leaders. "If leaked documents are any indication, Lai was paying Wolfowitz for business services rendered, not the other way around," Suzanne Pepper wrote on the China Elections and Governance blogs.

According to the blogs' page, Pepper is a Hong Kong-based American writer with a long-standing interest in 20th century Chinese politics. What she wrote about Lai was one of the most shameless pieces of misinformation I have seen in a while. According to Myanmar news sources, among the topics Wolfowitz discussed with Myanmar army chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing were "ongoing political, economic, and administrative reforms; cooperation between the army and the government in maintaining peace and order; and the army not being directly involving in running nation's economy, but establishing economic enterprises for the welfare of service personnel and their families and also supporting the economy of the nation."

And Pepper would have us believe that Wolfowitz went to Myanmar to talk to the army chief about this because Lai paid him $75,000. This is almost surreal. A more educated guess is that the sum was for Wolfowitz to bring Lai along.

The world is full of ironies. During the Bush administration, Wolfowitz helped wall Myanmar's people in between the two fences of home-grown authoritarianism and West-imposed isolation, now he is offering the country "foreign capital". Human rights, as defined by American standards, have not improved that much, but Wolfowitz's priorities have evidently changed, so anything goes. "Although it's not uncommon for companies to hire consultants when they enter new markets, many who work in the field, speculated as to precisely what expertise Wolfowitz could offer the country that he once helped isolate," a commentator at The Cable pointed out. The writer is bright, but naive.

If "Trotskyist" Leung Kwok-hung and "unionist" Lee Cheuk-yan can receive funding, with impunity, from neo-liberalist Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, known to be a "close friend" of neo-conservative Paul Wolfowitz, the "chief architect of the Iraq War", what makes Hongkongers believe the former two to be genuine progressives, and not merely strikebreakers masquerading as radicals?

Had these documents not been leaked, millions of dollars would still be sitting comfortably in their bank accounts, and their political parties and supporters would not have a clue.

The author is a veteran current affairs commentator.

(HK Edition 08/05/2014 page9)