In the past two weeks the contest to become Hong Kong's next chief executive, which was supposed to look gentlemanly and vaguely democratic, has descended into chaos.
She has to make the generals understand they can't stay in a halfway house between military and civilian rule forever, and that they can't stick with a jerry-built constitution that looks vaguely democratic but ensures they always have the last word.
I suppose it is vaguely democratic to grant them part of our space to make their case, but as this is a financial relationship (they pay us, either directly or through a third-party), it's not a question of free speech.
Yes, let's hang on to that vague social democratic consensus of bickering over who will eliminate the deficit in 2020 and who will do it in 2019 and who really, really, really loves the NHS with knobs on.
The list includes gradual nuclear disarmament, the formation of a vaguely defined "democratic league" and the universal prosecution of crimes against humanity.
An industrial, Russophone city, this was where the Ukrainian Bolsheviks placed their capital after an uprising at Kiev's Arsenal plant failed in early 1918, suppressed by the vaguely social democratic Ukrainian People's Republic that then ruled the city as the Russian Empire collapsed.
I can't resist noting that Rustin was very dear to my late parents, who knew him through various of the vaguely social-democratic causes they were all involved with — unionizing sharecroppers, supporting Indian independence, getting visas for Spanish refugees, fighting "Jim Crow," you name it.
Appearing for the second day in a row with his wife, Judith Steinberg Dean, Dr. Dean made vague accusations about Democratic opponents using "dirty tricks" to derail his campaign, and later, in a brief interview with The New York Times, reflected on his fall from the front-runner's slot in pre-Iowa polls.
Some prominent Turks are calling for the law's repeal on the grounds that it is vague and anti-democratic.
Mr Sisi, who as military chief led the toppling of Mohammed Morsi, has spoken vaguely of his democratic convictions, preferring instead to focus on what he sees as the need for Egyptians to unite in the face of security and economic challenges.
The huge demonstration was also a deep embarrassment for the territory's new chief executive, Donald Tsang, who has tried to cajole Hong Kong's democrats into accepting only vague assurances that fully democratic elections will one day be held.
