Lawmaker Leung Kwok-hung protests in front of Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang

Politics is a funny business. In a sense, something is happening all the time. When there is nothing else to fill newspapers, the desperate editor turns to the Political Desk, confident they will be able to find someone to say something newsworthy. In another sense, though, nothing changes. The process may be exciting, even exuberant, but it leaves us in the same place.

Barack Obama's success in the US presidential election was a good example. Obama promised change. But that is itself a normal part of the electoral machinery. Presidential candidates from the non-ruling party always promise change. They appeal to young voters because old voters have heard this song before.

Hong Kong politics is a similar example of eventful stasis. There were elections, there were rows, there were crises, but in the end we were still in the position we were left in by the little trick that history played on us in 1997. In some matters, the Hong Kong Government made up its own mind – or increasingly failed to do so. In others, it was clearly a mere conduit for instructions issued elsewhere.

Spectators with a taste for fine distinctions could find some differences in colonialism with Chinese characteristics. Beijing interfered more, though still not often, but also allowed a more elaborate machinery to pretend to be a representative government. It claimed dutiful patriotic support, which the British neither sought nor deserved, but reminded us with occasional bursts of thuggish behaviour, corruption or both that while you might love your motherland she was a crotchety old bird with some nasty habits.

This puts the Chief Executive of the HKSAR in a difficult position and both incumbents so far have suffered from an inexorable long-term decline in public esteem. Perhaps this is inevitable. In 2008, Donald Tsang's poll numbers continued the slide that has taken them a long way from the peak reached in the days when to be welcome, it was only necessary not to be Tung Chee-hwa. Critics offered a lot of advice, but most of it conflicted. Soft commentators called for humility, consultation and willingness to listen to the public. Hard commentators called for firm government and rigorous adherence to policies once announced.  Tsang may have got the worst of both worlds by trying both at different times.

For an example of misplaced obstinacy there was the addition of another layer of political appointees to the top layer of government. Most Hong Kong people do not take a close interest in the administrative machinery and this looked expensive and unnecessary. It was difficult to see why the persons appointed were considered worthy of such inflated salaries. We were not told about the fringe benefits. Still, people are used to governments wasting money on a large scale. The real problem emerged when it transpired that some of the people who wished to serve Hong Kong citizens were themselves citizens of other places.

This is the sort of last-minute discovery that makes you wonder if our leaders are awake. It was entirely to be expected that in a cross-section of educated and politically literate Hong Kong residents there would be some in possession of a foreign passport. It seems someone had considered the question whether the deputy to a secretary, who himself is legally required to be a citizen, is subject to the same requirement, and decided the deputy was not. This seems to me dubious. But nobody, apparently, had considered that what was legally acceptable might be a political calamity. In the end, the appointees all gave up their passports "voluntarily".  By this time, it looked like a concession to the public outcry, which is no doubt what it was.

Much of the spring and summer was devoted to the political non-event of the year, the travels of the Olympic flame. The four-yearly ritual of the flame was a Nazi invention (it would have baffled the ancient Greeks) but at least in Hitler's version, the flame did travel by a more or less sensible route from Athens to Berlin.  Quite what this progression symbolises has never been made entirely clear.

Tibet is not an issue
The Chinese Government's version had the flame engaged in a sort of global tourism, travelling by air between selected cities before doing a comprehensive tour of the Mainland itself. Unfortunately, some of the selected cities contained people who were not great admirers of the Chinese Government, and particularly its activities in Tibet, where there had been riots earlier in the year. Attempts to extinguish the flame became an outdoor sport for protesters and when they succeeded, the torch did not, in fact, have to return to Mount Olympus to be reignited. Perhaps any old flame will do.

After the flame had been mobbed in some places and diverted to avoid spectators in others, the question of what would happen in Hong Kong provoked an orgy of patriotic posturing. Some people swore to lay down their lives if necessary in defence of the flame. This was unlikely to be necessary. Tibet is not an issue in Hong Kong and in any case, protests in the city are notoriously polite. One Hong Kong U student achieved a moment of fame by proposing to demonstrate in the Tibetan interest. She was only going to wave a banner, but the police, taking no chances, arrested her "for her own safety", an interesting legal innovation.

Some perspective was restored to public discourse by the Sichuan earthquake, which made the whole Olympic circus look a bit tawdry. Here was a real human tragedy. In many ways, it symbolised both the progress and the lack of progress on the Mainland. Rescue operations were swift, appeared to be well organised, and were enthusiastically supported by national leaders. On the other hand, many of the buildings that collapsed, including a heart-breaking number of schools, were shoddy monuments to slack enforcement and corruption. Hong Kong people were sympathetic and generous.

The Beijing Olympics, when they finally arrived, provided some rather similar mixed signals. The opening ceremony was a spectacular piece of choreography some of which, it later transpired, had been faked. Orders had been given that medals would be won and medals were duly collected in large quantities. Hong Kong people mostly identified with the Mainland's team, which was just as well because the local hopefuls did not win anything.

At the same time Hong Kong earned the distinction of being the co-host of the   Olympic Equestrian events. The 11-day competition which took place in Shatin in August attracted a large number of spectators from the Mainland and abroad. 

Hong Kong people did not dwell on the other Olympic stories, about dissidents being hustled out of sight or into custody, about householders being left roofless by sporting redevelopments, about social problems being hushed up to avoid spoiling the Olympic atmosphere.

This was a pity. Among the issues left until after the Games was the matter of chemicals turning up in milk formula and killing babies as a result. Thousands of babies were poisoned. Probably the number of victims will never be known. In places where medical care is primitive or non-existent, small babies die mysteriously all the time.  In due course, melamine turned up in products sent to Hong Kong. Mainland milk suddenly dropped off a lot of families' shopping lists.

Still, as the Legislative Council elections approached, most observers expected the year's patriotic fervour to boost the pro-government parties. There was triumph at the Olympics, triumph in space, feelings of solidarity inspired by the earthquake. Also, the Government produced an US$11 billion package of goodies to cheer us all up, thereby leaving itself looking flatfooted when a real crisis came along later.

Elections to the council follow a traditional trajectory. In the early stages of campaigning, there are dark mutterings about the prospects for the democratic camp, which is usually presented as divided, confused and alienated from the public. Oddly, no stories appear about the problems of the DAB, which is united, confused and even more alienated from the public. Gatherings of DAB supporters usually look as if they were recruited in old folks' homes. What is the party going to do when all these people die?

Closer to election day, we get the polls. Unfortunately, Hong Kong's electoral system is extremely confusing both for electors and for people trying to work out their intentions. The system is also very sensitive. A few thousand voters changing their minds can make a big difference. The upshot of this is that the polls are extremely variable. One researcher will find a candidate looking good, while another has him on the way out. This is fine for newspapers, which can present an eventful scene by pretending to believe that different poll results indicate changes in the public's views, rather than random variations in the samples. Perhaps we shouldn't complain. At least the result is exciting.

In the closing stages of the campaign there was a consensus, as there always is, that the pro-government parties were going to do well. They had benefited from the patriotic groundswell and would also benefit from the expected low turn out, the pundits proclaimed.

And so we came to the results, which were much as before. About 60 percent of voters continue to prefer democratic candidates of one stripe or another, even if they are rude about each other. The turn out was low, but this made no difference. I think the declining figures are just a result of the register going out of date. Some sporadic efforts were made early in the year to persuade people to register or update their addresses. But there was no drive comparable with the campaigns we used to see when the Government really wanted to get people on the register. You couldn't leave an MTR station in some places without being accosted by an officialette asking if you had registered yet. Now, we just get the occasional TV announcement.

I fear the Government's attitude to voting is like former Singapore prime minister Lee Kwan Yew's attitude to opposition. They accept an obligation to make it possible, but they do not have to encourage it.

The results of the September LegCo elections from geographic and functional constituencies showed that the Pan Democratic camp had won 23 seats, the Beijing loyalist camp 30 seats and the non-affiliated group 7 seats.  It was politically significant that the Beijing loyalist Liberal Party had failed to win a single seat in directly contested elections.

The interesting feature of the new Legco was the appearance of a group of Social Democrat legislators, who made no bones about their intention to take a more confrontational approach to the Government. Legco has generally inherited the atmosphere and conventions of its colonial predecessor which, being for most of its history entirely appointed, did not really do conflict.

The first sign of the new way of doing things was the notorious banana-throwing incident, in which some legislators protested by throwing fruit when Tsang announced the possibility of means testing the "fruit money" – a sort of monthly tip paid to Hong Kong residents over 70 years old. The sequel to this was interesting. Some people expressed horror and revulsion at the disorder. Some people thought it probably expressive of a lot of voters' attitudes. A lot of people thought the means testing was a bad idea.

Having thought about the matter, the Government then decided that it also thought means testing was a bad idea and withdrew the proposal. So the bananas had won, perhaps.

This was not the only example of the Government tripping over obstacles of its own making and achieving an undignified compromise. The Government's attempt to exempt itself from race discrimination legislation embarrassed even its own supporters. Minimum wage legislation seemed to be on the agenda, but nobody wanted to grasp this nettle so that was where it stayed.

Part of the pre-election present was an announcement that the levy collected from employers of domestic helpers would be suspended. The levy has never been popular. It was introduced in a time of high unemployment and sold as preserving jobs for local people (who it seems actually prefer unemployment to domestic service) and financing the government's retraining agency.

In practice, the money has never been spent. The retraining agency does not need it and it cannot be used for other purposes. So suspending the levy should have been uncontroversial. But the announcement was soon followed by the discovery that many employers had noticed a little wrinkle in the arrangements: to maximise their savings they should fire their existing helper and take on a new one in September.  Some Hong Kong employers of helpers are quite greedy and hard-faced enough to do this. So the date was hastily changed.

By the time the new Legco assembled, a lot of councillors had the levy in their sights. The charge is small, but it causes a lot of annoyance to employers, a large and vocal group. There ensued an undignified tussle over whether it was constitutional for a member to propose abolition of the levy. Normally members are not allowed to propose anything that would cost the Government money but because the levy is not put in the general pot with the rest of the tax take, it probably escapes this prohibition. At the time of writing, the Government was offering a five-year suspension and some members were still eager to propose abolition. Rarely can a government have been so embarrassed so unnecessarily. The levy was a silly idea in the first place and abolition would have been a better move than attracting attention by tinkering.

Over these local preoccupations loomed the prospect of a global economic catastrophe. This is not the sort of thing our Government handles well, alas. On the other hand, there are plenty of good excuses. This one really is beyond our control. So it's not their fault.

Political observers can now look forward to the delights of a Legco inquiry into the banking business, with particular reference to the marketing of mini-bonds – a complex investment vehicle that has turned out in some cases to be unrewarding. The arguments against having an inquiry were predictable and not very interesting, as were the arguments in favour. An interesting constitutional point came up: is the member for the banking functional constituency allowed to speak on some matters, or does he have an interest that requires him to shut up?

This is an interesting question because the whole point of having functional constituencies is supposed to be that debates are informed by the presence of specialists in the subject under discussion. From that point of view, the bankers' man in the chamber should be not just allowed but encouraged to speak up. On the other hand, when industry-wide matters are being discussed he will, of course, have an interest himself. On the whole, the experience of functional constituency members has not encouraged people to give them the benefit of the doubt. No such member has ever been distracted by the needs of the community from pursuing the interests of his own electors.

A major development in the democratic camp was the virtual dissolution of The Frontier group in November, 2008 and its elected leader Emily Lau and 51 members joining the Democratic Party.

So a quiet year in some ways. We passed a peaceful interlude between the announcement of the "timetable" for the introduction of full democracy by 2012 and the discovery, which I expect will come in the next year or two, that either the timetable is not a timetable or the full democracy will not be full democracy. But for the moment, at least, I can say that without being arrested. So the situation is not hopeless.