Kapok: Drawing the line

I must admit it is often tricky to “draw the line between academic research, political commentary and direct political intervention”—to quote my former employer, and for sure, the easiest way to draw that line is to make sure that there can be no conflict between these three forms of endeavor by just eliminating the first one, even though your mission is precisely to make sure that everything academic is protected under your watch.
If you don’t write about politics from an academic perspective, then there are few chances that you will be sought after to provide political commentary and for sure any “direct political intervention” will be seen as “just” the act of any citizen, unless you become yourself an “activist”, that it is to say a recognized figure of a political movement.
Many questions arise from that “easiest” path: is it worthy of a university to let go of sophistication and decide that all intellectual undertakings should be governed by the most basic law of electricity of “on or off”, depending on the circumstances? Is it even effective in the short-term and can the expected trade-off, set at a few tens of millions, be “safely” secured? Is it sustainable in terms of image and standing in the community, and if yes, how so? From a moral standpoint, the “easiest” path is plain wrong because the end justifies the means, but then, even from a practical and almost cynical angle, what are the actual benefits going to be?
Now, regarding my own “convictions”. I know no political scientist who is not a democrat at heart. How can one studying “power in a social context” and deciphering the best forms of government be in favor of totalitarianism or even authoritarianism given our dark and traumatizing twentieth century? And even if we let go of the old categories, everybody knows, even the highest officials of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the dangers of plutocracy—the government of, by and for the wealthiest—and kleptocracy—the government of confiscators/thieves. Why would Xi Jinping engage in such a wide-sweeping campaign to fight corruption if that was not the case? Why would close to 200 members of the Central Committee of the CCP, including a few from the elite Politburo, fall for good because of that new operation to catch “flies as well as tigers”?
Sure thing, “democracy” is not as popular as it used to be in the People’s Republic, say up to March 2012 when then Premier Wen Jiabao emotionally spoke about the need for political reform following democratic imperatives.
In fact, democracy seems pretty much the target of the “Seven Speak-Nots” defined in May 2013 as the taboo subjects that should not be discussed openly in the press or by academic circles (universal values, civil society, citizen rights, judicial independence, freedom of the press, past mistakes of the communist party, and the privileged capitalist class). Should that affect Macao? Is there any Communist party in need of restructuring in Macao? Is there a party that does not want to see its capacity to rule affected by an unquestionably weakening drive to uproot corruption in its own ranks?
Being a democrat at heart does not mean that one does not know the shortcomings of democracy, especially when it comes to “efficiency” and the claim of representativeness—disenchantment arises as much in “archaeodemocracies” as in “neodemocracies”. But then, one of the things I argue in my latest “academic” paper is that the corporatist outlook of Macao’s political system inherited from the 1980s, despite or because of the liberal context, has become fairly frustrating for a locally engaged, more affluent, more professional and better-educated youth that can but all too easily blame outdated and unsuitable intermediation bodies for all the inadequate public policies catering only for segmented parts of the community. That cost me my job.

Published in Macau Daily Times, July 25th 2014

Kapok: Contentious words

Let’s be clear, from a constitutional point of view there is nothing “illegal” in organizing an informal public consultation aka survey in the form of a mock referendum regarding the Chief Executive selection process. It is however legally “invalid”, as stated by both the Macao SAR government and the Central Government Liaison Office, as it has absolutely no binding effect in law. But is that what really matters?
In the words of the three organizers of this “civil referendum” or “civil society sponsored consultation”, the whole idea is to “give citizens an opportunity to experience the exercise of civil rights and civil liberty”. It is of course highly politically motivated, as this will take place right before the election of the Chief Executive in August, and results will be announced only after the highly probable reappointment of Chui Sai On for a second term. Of the two motions to be discussed, one will concern the possible election of the Chief Executive through universal suffrage in 2019, but the other is definitely targeted at the ongoing process, as this second motion could be either “Do you have confidence in the sole candidate in the Chief Executive Election 2014 [name of the candidate] to become the Chief Executive?” or “Which candidate in the Chief Executive Election 2014 do you favor as the Chief Executive?” In the eyes of the MSAR government, this political stunt is thus clearly seen as a provocation, and the “illegal” characterization can then be understood as a condemnation of a perceived attempt to discredit the official result by resorting to a non-legally binding substitutive method of designation.
Two elements of context have to be kept in mind. The fact that close to 800,000 people participated in a civil referendum at the end of June in Hong Kong to advocate a citizen initiative in the selection process for the candidates who will participate in the Chief Executive elections in 2017. The issue is to say: let’s not transform the promise of “universal suffrage” as enshrined in article 45 of the Hong Kong Basic Law into a meaningless one if the choice of candidates is not to be open. But then, the Hong Kong SAR government can legitimately claim that the sentence preceding that promise takes precedence: the method “shall be specified in the light of the actual situation in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and in accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress.” Yet, sponsored by the Occupy Central with Love and Peace, the Hong Kong civil referendum was only concerned with an election to come, and was commissioned to the Public Opinion Programme of The University of Hong Kong and the Centre for Social Policy Studies of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, thus giving it the “respectability” of both distance in time and academic grounding—can anybody imagine ANY university in Macao engaging in that kind of endeavor?
Well, there was one previously – a survey I ran on the election of the Chief Executive back in early 2009. We found that 51% of our respondents favored “suffrage universal” out of the 4 possible choices. No claim here in being legally binding, but then, neither does it contradict article 47 of the Macao Basic Law: “The Chief Executive of the Macao Special Administrative Region shall be selected by election or through consultations held locally and be appointed by the Central People’s Government.”
Ultimately, from an academic perspective, my questions are: why do like-minded civil groups in Macao have to resort to this kind of “political happening”? In plain English, why is the system so “stuck” that it does not allow for new forms of political participation to emerge? Isn’t it obvious that between the depiction of the 2012 political reform package as having “a positive impact on the maintenance of a stable political system and improved democratic elements in the constitution of Macao” (Macao Yearbook 2013) and the 20,000 people demonstrating on May 25th 2014 against a government-sponsored law regarding a (too) generous retirement scheme for senior officials, there is a growing discrepancy? What is really missing in the Basic Law is not the promise of universal suffrage but the duty to take into account “the actual situation” of Macao. Clearly, the principle of “one position, one candidate” that has been the rule since 2004, although not illegal, is not helping…

Published in Macau Daily Times, July 11th 2014