Right before the start of the legislative campaign I was asked to give a talk about “what to expect” from the elections. I basically raised five questions and provided simple and yet straightforward answers. Can we expect a vast overhaul of the Assembly? Certainly not! Can we expect new faces? Not really, and yet… Can we expect a few surprises? Very few, and yet… Can we expect a change in style in the campaign? Most probably as “bottom” seats will be hard-fought. Can we expect a change in the future workings of the Assembly? Only marginally, given the highly expectable overall composition of the new legislature. One soon realizes that political predictions cannot go too wrong if one accommodates enough semantic flexibility to tolerate a plurality of interpretation in one’s own prediction, or to put it more simply, if one pays due tribute to the idea that “everything is in everything”—a trick fortunetellers are well aware of. And yet, somehow, one would prefer to be really wrong sometimes, thus letting the exciting components of true surprise kick in and the benefit of uncertainty, though not fully unrestrained, bring its fair share of excitement.
For directly elected members of the Assembly, results—not necessarily the most desirable ones, one must admit—yield two main lessons. First, the Democrats are not the highest vote-getters in these kind of elections any more, and thus will have to reflect deeply on a strategy that merely favor opposing and confronting the government, its many shortcomings and its cronies. In a more affluent society, one in which the have-nots are getting wealthier even though not at the same pace as the happy few, demands have to be formulated more in terms of alternative and therefore in displaying a capacity to propose and not only to oppose—a perspective fully acknowledged and marginally put in practice by José Pereira Coutinho. During the campaign, all the candidates, including the pro-business ones who have their reasonable share of responsibility in tilting the balance towards their own narrowly defined interests, voiced out the many hardships endured by common folks, an hypocrisy that made the Democrats’ past farsighted claims clearly inaudible. Second, organizational capacity is everything, although it plays along very dissimilar fault lines: Chan Meng Kam’s highly improbable triple win derives from his deep resources, an ethnic community base, a real populist flair for empathizing with ordinary people, the well-advertised supposed achievements of the incumbent, and an open support given by the challengers (junkets, new casino licensees and second-circle traditional political families) to old traditional vested interests (the three big Macao clans). In the case of Mak Soi Kun, the second highest vote getter, the support from the mainland was decisive and he is definitely what comes closer to a pro-Beijing camp in Macao. Finally, traditional associations shifted their support from pro-union to neighborhood related lists, as if Kwan Tsui Hang’s independence of mind had to somehow be trimmed. But potent organizational capacity also produced positive results for José Pereira Coutinho’s list and even, to a lesser degree, for Melinda Chan. The question is for the Democrats and even Coutinho if he wants to pursue further his legally innovative and policy-oriented role: how can any organization continue to be relevant for the community without proper resources (self-generated, on loan or granted)? The only answer lies in a real law on political parties, a law that would allow for a transparent and substantial public financing of political organizations that manage to garner significant results during election time.
Ultimately, only a meaningful assembly, one that is fully elected will make it possible for corruption to be curtailed, real competition to occur and sophisticated policy alternatives to be proposed: in the meantime we are stuck with royal appointments of the rust-roof “big gun” Fong Chi Keong, a close associate of the Ho’s, and the clumsy debut of a tender Ma. On what ground? Business, as usual.
Published in Macau Daily Times, October 11th 2013
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