Every now and then it sounds like an imperative to reflect with a bit of distance on the situation in Macao. Going away for my annual leave to Europe always gives me that opportunity to further the gap, getting to read with fresh eyes news and analysis coming from afar and being suddenly immersed in the joys and mores of a world that remains both familiar and yet imprecise because of presumed turmoil derived from what appears to be everlasting economic concerns.
A very common, not to say overwhelming perception in Asia is that Europe is going through a time of great upheavals and that Europeans are in much despair, Greece serving as the utmost repulsive example of failure as far as governance is concerned. If you add the fact that Greece is the birthplace of demos kratia, the power of the people, you very soon stumble upon very sloppy and yet highly pervasive lines of argument establishing some kind of causality between the least worse form of government and the inability to grow or nurture oneself economically.
The people who make that connection are usually the same who profess that democracy is anyway a product of importation that has little compatibility with the cultural values of Asia—never mind that Asia itself is not one, and that the political regimes of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan can without a doubt be characterized as democracy. Of course, capitalism, that is to say the accumulation of wealth held by private hands vying for profits, also originated in Europe, but for that accommodation and acculturation appear to be almost natural. Culture is selective, especially in the mind of those who wish to keep a monopoly on decision taking.
And yet, everybody seems to agree that one of the key sources of legitimacy for a government derives from its ability to take into account the wishes of the citizenry, the so-called public opinion, at least to a certain extent. Despite its incapacity in pushing the envelop of democratic reform to its rightful level, the government of the Macao SAR has not shun from that necessity, allowing for a proliferation of public consultations and a drastically increased receptivity to the public’ grievances. So much so in fact that legislator and member of the Executive Council Chan Meng Kam recently lamented that the government had gone too far in this respect, showing indecision, loosing its credibility and sapping its authority along the way. Taking recent examples of thwarted public regulations and policies such as the bus fare hike, the 3G upgrade or the Taipa Traffic Centre relocation, Mr Chan insisted that lack of proper planning systemically caused a huge embarrassment for the government, having but only one choice: to stop or diametrically change pronouncements when met with serious opposition from the public.
Reading recently a book authored by Christian Morel on absurd decisions and why we persist in committing fundamental and persistent errors, I was reminded that training manuals for pilots distinguish between four types of error: carelessness, transgression (breaking a rule), ignorance and representation—the latter being probably the most lethal as it has little chances to be spotted. Representation or perception is at the heart of human psychology: we all use heuristic methods, in which shortcuts based on our experience allow for greater velocity in taking a decision but also more abundant approximations. What is even more troubling is that this cognitive makeshift ends up on a decision that is seldom the responsibility of a single individual but of a group.
What is it going to be for this recent spate of senseless decisions taken in our SAR: carelessness, transgression, ignorance or representation? A mix of the four? And what is the remedy? Actual accountability, political one, would not have been a luxury.
Published in the Macau Daily Times, July 20th 2012
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