French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre acknowledged that the famous sentence — “Hell is other people” — he included in the play No Exit (1944) had often, if not always, been misunderstood. People assumed that what he meant was that our relationships with other people always have a degree of malevolence, and thus that our relationships with others are always “infernal” by nature. He later explained that what he really wanted to express was that IF our relationships to others were distorted and malign THEN other people could only be seen as “hell”. He further asserted that “the other” was the most important part of us, in order to understand ourselves. Without the other and an open mind to otherness, there is no way one can truthfully understand who he or she is. And yet, if one becomes overly dependent on judgments made about them by others, then one’s life indeed becomes hell. This distorted view of the “other”, the foreign, the alien is exactly what is poisoning the debate - or the lack thereof - regarding the government’s proposal to assist foreign students who have completed their diplomas in Macao to gain easier access to the local labor market.
Ever since the government announced that it was looking at adopting a facilitating policy pertaining to non-resident students in mid-May, debate has been fierce, especially because few details were given on the triggering factors, workings, projected consequences and scheduling of such a plan. Democrats and union representatives have been the most vocal in echoing concerns muttered by the population — as much because of the lack of particulars as an “instinctive” protective move in favor of Macao’s local labor force. For a liberal mind and an educator, this comes as a surprise, at least regarding the Democrats (unionists lost their “internationalist” Marxist approach in the 1970s).
More than anything else, young people from Macao need to learn to compete and prepare to be challenged. Protective, not to say shielding, measures can only be transitional. In France, when one talks about “national preference”, such attitudes are immediately associated with a far-right and xenophobic political movement. When a French right-
wing Minister of the Interior issued a circular in May 2011 that restricted the number of non-European Union foreign students allowed to stay and work in France after completing their diplomas, it sparked an uproar, and the circular was immediately abrogated by the new socialist government, sworn in May 2012. It was not the idea that being “selective” was wrong per se, but that one could not claim to attract talented people to study in the territory — an embodiment of soft power — and at the same time refuse these talented minds to stay on if they chose to do so. Are the Democrats and unionists in Macao less liberal-minded? I believe not. What is at stake here is the ever-deepening wariness between, on the one hand, representatives who derive their power from the people and, on the other hand, the government along with the alienated business elite that supports it.
The failure of the motion calling for a plenary debate on the proposal to allow non-local students to work in Macao on June 11 in the Legislative Assembly is a sad reminder that the gap is widening to a point that will almost certainly be impossible to mend; among the nine who supported the motion, we find three democrats, four unionists (including an independent), the elected representative from the neighborhood associations and a populist born-
again “lady of the people”…out of nine, eight are directly elected legislators! The main arguments aired by the 10 naysayers have to do with the excessive politicization of the debate in the run up to the elections in September (none of them are actually directly elected) and the lack of time left in the present session of the Legislative Assembly. It is rather unique indeed to hear “politicians” declaring that they don’t want to engage in political debate, and for business-minded people to deny the benefits of productivity gains: why did the government introduce the proposal in May in the first place and isn’t there at least two months left before the end of the parliamentary session?
Published in Macau Daily Times, June 14th 2013
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