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…
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