Kapok: Teeny Circles

The visit of Wu Bangguo to Macao, the first one ever of a Chairman of China’s National People’s Congress, made the front page of newspapers in every hue as if the whole city was welcoming this high-profile figure of the central government with a bang. Due to leave office in March, Mr Wu was a member of the exclusive Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China until November, and officially No. 3 in the national line of command. It’s no wonder that traffic around Penha Hill was so out of control and the city swarming with policemen dressed-up in flashy yellow vests and wielding silicone guns! The frenzy is ending tonight, but beware: the parking ticket emission intermission will thus be over soon!
Two seemingly separate events have brought Mr Wu to Macao: the 20th anniversary of the Macao Basic Law, our mini constitution, and the 100th birthday celebration of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Macao. Also on the agenda: meetings with the different branches of government along with extensive tours of the city and even a quick stint in Hengqing island to visit the University of Macau’s new campus—perceived as a true embodiment of a better integration between the Special Administrative Region and proper China. As far as the Basic Law is concerned, Mr Wu’s tone was far more praising than when he celebrated the 10th anniversary in Beijing: at the time, he had just been appointed and it was still the latest fad to refer to “giving full play to democracy”. The National People’s Congress headed by Mr Wu endorsed the so-called “+2+2+100” political reform package for Macao last year, a far cry from what was granted to Hong Kong, and the emphasis today seems to be more on the development of a “harmonious society” and “scientific governance”, proving again that the “high degree of autonomy” bestowed upon Macao reflects what local interests interpret as being worth fighting for.
Interestingly enough, there were two full-page ads in yesterday’s Macao Daily News to welcome Wu Bangguo: one published by the Jiangmen Town Folks Association and the other one by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Macao. Town folk associations are very common among migrant Chinese communities, and by some count there are more than 100,000 people originating from Jiangmen (a nearby district in Guangdong) in Macao. The association created in 2002 boasts more than 30,000 members. People of Jiangmen origin include Fernando Chui Sai On and Francis Tam Pak Yuen, as well as legislators such as Mr Chui’s cousin and brother, and Vitor Cheung Lup Kwan: no wonder that its mission statement reads “Love Macao, love our country; promote exchanges with our beloved hometown”.
Patriotic and grassroots associations do play a very important role in the SAR and are very tightly connected to the government and deemed pro-China. Their role is to gather the support of different sections of the society in favor of government policies in exchange for being allowed to articulate their own community-based interests and get funded to do so. These patron-clients relations date back to the colonial era: in many respects the Jiangmen Town Folks Association does play a similar role as the Neighborhood Association and the Federation of Trade Union —a revamped version of the mass line. The Chamber of Commerce belongs to a somewhat higher playing field and is more concerned with grooming the future leaders of Macao. Its strongman, Ho Yin, was China’s voice in the territory in the 1960s, and Ho Yin’s son, Edmund Ho, was himself its vice-president before he became the first Chief Executive of the SAR. Today, the vice-president of the Chamber is Ho Iat Seng, a businessman who is also the vice-president of the Legislative Assembly (indirectly (s)elected) and the only member of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress. Circles, small ones…

Kapok: The Art of Swallowing

Where on the planet can you concurrently have a vivid discussion on several controversial points of a much-needed and yet much-delayed Land Law and Urban Planning Law on the one hand, and a very contentious consultation process on a half-baked new plan to develop one of the most iconic parts of Macao next to the Macao tower on the other hand? How can one not see that there is a blatant contradiction in praising boisterously albeit against one’s own nature the many virtues of due processes and transparency, and at the same time trying to force-feed the public with a much-opposed and ill-designed plan? Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, said it himself: “The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed!” There is no lie here, just mere concealment, so Macao’s modern interpretation of it is rather “the bigger the pill, the easier it will be to swallow!”
One can feel that we are in an election year when the total number of votes for the Urban Planning Law only reached 19 “in favor” (out of a theoretical total of 29) during the first plenary reading on February 4th. Even a figure like Kwan Tsui Hang from the Macao Federation of Trade Unions, a traditional government-leaning vote-bank, decided to abstain on the grounds that “too many rules and mechanisms will be defined by administrative regulations, including the master plan”, thus excluding any oversight from the Legislature, the sole body with some members returned through universal suffrage, and forsaking too much discretionary power to the government, supposedly in the overall and superior interest of the community. The same goes for the Land Law, for which many criticisms were heard because the secretary for public works had a hard time explaining why a law would insist so much on the exceptions to open-bidding and public tendering when the government would feel that it was in the public interest; isn’t this law precisely designed to avoid the lack of transparency that used to prevail when public tendering was the exception rather than the rule? Does anybody remember that this state of affairs was quite instrumental in securing Mr Lo’s predecessor a spot in the Coloane prison for an extended lease of close to 30 years?
Now, turning back to the Sai Van lake night-market project, supposedly aimed at beefing up tourism in Macao while preserving traditional culinary delights and promoting local (if not locally-made…) memorabilia; what is wrong with governmental agencies, led by the IACM? In just five arguments delineated in a long column published in the Macao Daily News, the communist-backed Chinese daily with the widest circulation, former legislator David Chow Kam Fai hit the nail on the head in late November: the plan is against the principles of “free market.” The first stage of consultation is meaningless (only 63 opinions gathered) and results were never properly divulged; this will destroy irremediably a unique and peaceful natural scenery. The whole plan is pre-ordained and is devoid of any fairness, and finally SMEs will never be given a chance to thrive. Given the very strong opposition coming from society, the New Macao Association is perfectly right in insisting that the real issue of this consultation should be whether or not the whole project is desirable, rather than misleadingly focusing on the modalities. All the newspapers in Macao, including again the very conservative Macao Daily News (nonetheless inflating the number of participants in the latest round of consultation to 100 instead of the commonly printed figure of 40) had to report that the government was facing a very strong popular opposition, the whole project being seen as a mere nuisance bound for disaster if one recollects the ill-fated Nam Van lake bars.
Mr Chan Chak Mo, one of the two indirectly elected legislators representing “culture and social affairs” (don’t ask me how only businessmen come to represent “culture” in Macao), is a staunch proponent of the night market: can we allow this to happen just for “personal” convenience? Remember, Mr Chan is also the one who has been entrusted with the organization of the second-rate and back-to-the-future Macao food festival…