Last Sunday was a typical Sunday of protests. Among them were demonstrations against foreign domestic workers seeking permanent residence, against police handling of student protestors during Vice-Premier Li Keqiang's visit to the University of Hong Kong (UHK), and the much publicized protest against the introduction of national education into the school curriculum.

Despite all the fanfare and agitation in the media before and after the protests, the fact remains that these were tiny rallies with only a couple hundred people at each. More and more citizens refrain from participating in protest rallies of any type as they no longer believe in this form of public expression. Rallies are not effective in getting what they want and it also shows that they have degenerated into blatant political tools.

I was happy to see only a small turn-out in the rally against national education. National education is practiced in practically every country and there is nothing to protest about for its belated introduction here. But like many pundits, I expected more drawing power from the mystically influential Union of Professional Teachers supposedly backed by some mushrooming groups of secondary school students. This goes to show that the hoopla about the rising tide of populist radicalism among those born in the 1990s in Hong Kong is most probably also a myth.

This observation was reinforced by the small number of participants in the protest against police for their handling of students during Vice-Premier Li's visit to the University of Hong Kong. If students were on the whole sympathetic to their union leaders, it would be extremely easy to muster several thousand green-horns from the various orientation camps now taking place at the campus to join them. Now it is clear that they would much more prefer silly ragging activities than saying no to the police. Student union officials should undergo some serious soul searching to find out what has gone wrong since they are obviously alienated from their members.

Hong Kong University President Tsui Lap-chee should also stop panicking and cease apologizing to a small bunch of frantic protestors. The vice-premier was his honored guest attending the university's centennial celebration at his invitation. Security of this national leader should be Tsui’s primary concern, and the police were there to help him. Hong Kong University owes an apology to the hard-working men and women in uniform who performed their duty in ensuring the smooth progress of this important event and instead got blamed for doing a good job.

The author is a member of the Commission on Strategic Development.