Hong Kong goes to the polls on Sunday to elect a new legislature that will lay the ground rules for direct elections, amid growing disquiet over mainland China's hold over the former British colony.
A wave of protests in Hong Kong ahead of citywide elections is posing a major test for the new leader as the prospect of voter discontent threatens to shake up the political landscape in retaliation against perceived meddling by Beijing.
Thousands have demonstrated outside government headquarters around the clock for a week demanding the school program be scrapped and forcing Leung to cancel what was to have been his first major international engagement as leader at the APEC forum in Russia.
Schoolchildren, teachers, parents and ordinary citizens have denounced the curriculum asCommunist Party propaganda glossing over the darker aspects of Chinese rule, hitting a raw nerve in the former British colony that remains proud of its freedoms 15 years after returning to China.
The protests have included hunger strikes and the parading of a replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue outside government offices, invoking memories of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square uprising in Beijing and throwing the spotlight on a new generation of activists determined to have their say.
"He (Leung) feels that just by repeating the same lines, the problem will go away. But Hong Kong civil society doesn't work like this anymore," said Lo Chi-kin, a public affairs consultant.
"These post-80s and -90s young people will not just go away after hearing the government utter the same old lines. They really want a part in the decision-making process ... and if you don't give them an equal chance at being a part of that process, the only way is for them to take to the streets."
This time round, the legislature will have a more democratic flavor - it has been expanded from 60 to 70 seats, with just over half of those to be directly elected in Sunday's polls.
The Legislative Council's next four-year term will set the stage for one-person, one-vote leadership elections in 2017, when Beijing has promised universal suffrage in the territory for the first time.
In 2020 it has promised to extend that to elections for the legislature, indicating it will do away with a complicated voting system which ensures pro-Beijing parties and candidates dominate the city's government.
But pro-democracy parties say China's communist rulers have no intention of easing their grip on the regional financial centre, and are suspicious about what form of "universal suffrage" the pro-Beijing executive will propose.
"The recent events show that many Hong Kong people are very fearful of communist rule and they feel that the communist government is interfering too much," Democratic Party vice chairwoman Emily Lau told AFP.
Pro-democracy candidates have been conspicuous on the streets, handing out how-to-vote cards and filling busy intersections with posters and fresh-faced campaign workers.
But no matter how hard they campaign, they say the system put in place after the 1997 handover to China from British rule is rigged against them.
"The rules of the game are almost fatal for the democratic camp," said Frederick Fung of the Hong Kong Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood, a small democratic party.
Thirty of the seats in the assembly are elected by so-called functional constituencies, made up of mainly pro-Beijing members of professional bodies including wealthy businessmen.
Half are directly elected from geographical constituencies where anyone is free to nominate -- and where pro-Beijing parties generally fare poorly.
The remaining five seats in the new assembly -- expanded from 60 to 70 seats under changes agreed two years ago -- will be directly elected from members of district councils currently dominated by pro-Beijing parties.
Pro-democracy candidates also complain that on top of the structural disadvantages, they face funding challenges because potential donors do not want to jeopardise business prospects in China by backing the democratic camp.
