Five months after Hong Kong’s Occupy protesters were cleared from the streets, the battle for free and fair elections is heating up again ahead of a crucial vote in the Chinese territory’s legislature next month.

The Hong Kong government needs to win the support of only four opposition, pro-democracy legislators to pass a Beijing-approved proposal to bring in a restricted form of universal suffrage that critics deride as a sham.

“We don’t have an awful lot of time left and I can’t tell what’s going to happen,” says Jasper Tsang, the president of the legislative council, who has vowed to break with convention by voting, in support of the government. “It looks most likely that both sides will remain intransigent and we won’t be able to make it.”