The Chief Executive Candidates Forum held on Thursday provided both Donald Tsang and Alan Leong an opportunity to deliver a personal performance in front of all the people of Hong Kong.

Tsang spoke with reason, pragmatism and poise, enumerating with ease his vision and policies and plans of implementing them. Leong, however, was overbearing, and made phoney promises about realizing universal suffrage in 2012 and providing 15-year free education.

After the forum, many pointed out that Leong was trying to please the crowd with claptrap, making promises that he could never fulfil. He dodged practical questions like how to foster the local economy, how to maintain Hong Kong's competitiveness, how to bolster education resources and how to create more jobs for the people. His evasiveness did not reflect any sense of responsibility in him.

Nevertheless, opposition legislators heaped praises on Leong, boasting that he had reversed his image as a tongue-tied person, and that he had reinvented himself with newly-found eloquence.

The fact is, Leong failed to lay down a workable platform, or present any feasible policy or political philosophy.

What he excelled in was just sophistry, avoiding essential questions by taking up non-essential ones that he used to make counter-offensives.

Leong might have acted like a passable orator, but he knew nothing about governance or what a "practical policy" means. He could not even make the distinction between foreign exchange reserve and fiscal reserve, which is just common sense. Lacking governing skill and knowledge, how can he run for the position of the leader of 7 million people?

Leong did his best to touch the heart of the people, making pledges after pledges. Yet, according to instant opinion polls conducted by the University of Hong Kong and the Lingnan University, the majority of the people felt Tsang had performed better, and more than 60 percent of the respondents expressed support for him.

These results tell us one thing: when the public chooses their chief executive, they do not look at a candidate's acting skill but his actual capability.

The forum is over. Before the polling day, the media may continue to analyze the duo's performances during the debate, but the attention of the Election Committee as well as the community is set to shift back to the comparison between the two contestants' platforms.

After all, selecting the chief executive cannot be based on the performance in one and a half hours. What counts more is whether a candidate's platform could serve the interest of Hong Kong and whether it can be carried out.

People will not forget that Leong evaded a key question in the forum: He demands in his platform that the central government's power to appoint Hong Kong's principal officials be revoked, that Legislative Council's functional constituency seats be abolished in one go, and that the posts of politically appointed officials be taken up by lawmakers. Since all these demands violate the Basic Law and run counter to the central government's existing basic policies towards Hong Kong and are not in line with the present local constitutional framework, how could he turn them into reality?

How will he govern Hong Kong if he undermines the Basic Law, which is the foundation of Hong Kong's prosperity?

Leong owes the Hong Kong people an explanation.