As I said, I am not sure of the best course of action. As some of you more sympathetic to the pro-dem side have said, better to have a horse in the race, which I certainly agree with, even if the race is rigged, but you also have to be conscious of the fact that you are giving up on the principle that there should not be pre-screening, and that in any event, the DOs can DQ you anyway. There is a real cost to legitimising the practice, particularly when you can insert virtually anything into the Basic Law by insertion and not just relevant matters (arguable that the Basic Law is already not being respected by the establishment, which should in theory be a shield, not a sword [hence all the new references with the Basic Law being subject to Mainland constitution etc.]) How do you run on resisting unfairness by giving in to unfairness (NSL in the Basic Law via NPC “interpretationâ€)?
Having said that, I am agnostic as to the approach taken, so long as it’s adopted consistently by the larger camp. What worries me is if a different approach is taken between candidates. The latest I understand is that the functional constituency legislators may sign the form. This may be a reasonable approach for professional sector representatives, but it does weaken the collective effect of bogus mass disqualifications. Since there is a geographical/functional constituency split though, it could be carried out logically.
The last thing to note is that before the NSL, the mainstream parties were actually the ones who refused to sign, and were not disqualified. Since the intent was mainly to pick off candidates they disliked, it was meant to be a pretext. Disqualifying candidates who did sign just showed up their intent the last time. A few of the mainstream party candidates also came out this time and already declared they would not sign this time either. Best not to fixate on which camps or persons will or will not sign and just hope for the best that you can do your part when the time comes.