Elections get me excited, even when one has no real choice and the predictability of the outcome is no less than 100%. This is uncommon, I admit, as what fills people with enthusiasm during electoral events is the thrill of the contest, the uncertainty of the ultimate result despite the polls and the predictions, and of course the fact that any election is an exercise in power, the power of the one dropping her or his ballot in the box in order to decide upon her or his community’s future for the next four or five years. Elections in essence need to be contested; they suppose competition. In order for this competition to take place, differences have to be carved up, contrasts revealed, ideological stances spelled out, contradictory options openly expressed, alternative proposals debated, etc. More often than not, the infighting and bickering have more to do with ego and personal postures than with platforms, and yet this is a moment when the whole body of citizens gets hooked by the “affairs of the city”, the etymological meaning of politics. Macao people still remember very vividly the 2012 elections of the Chief Executive (CE) in Hong Kong: images of Henry Tang, often caricatured as a pig in the satirical press, blasting live on TV Leung Chun-ying, nicknamed the wolf by the same press, over his tough stand on civil liberties were gripping—and indeed the original front-runner ultimately lost the race to the challenger. The pro-democratic camp candidate, Albert Ho, who stood no chance of winning right from the start, was ultimately relegated to an even fainter secondary role, despite his many attempts to corner both pro-establishment candidates over their (lack of) commitment regarding universal suffrage. And the ultimate irony is that there was no real power of the people either, as the “election committee” was only made up of 1,200 members.
So, what can get me so excited about the present CE elections in Macao? Of course not the program of the unique candidate, which remarkably resembles its 2009 previous incarnation. Of course not the campaign itself, which consists of touring the ever supportive corporations aka traditional interests-associations and hearing patiently their very segmented grievances and proposals, as if they had not have ample time to express these during the past five legislative sessions, again missing the big picture of the overall interest of the community. No, what really fascinates me is the acquiescent abjuration of the most basic democratic values voiced out by some commentators. The argument goes like this: There is no alternative, this is the nature of the “other” system in Macao, and a contested CE election is the exception in our SAR, as it only happened once, back in 1999.
It is true that Hong Kong, in that respect, is quite the opposite as it experienced only two “exceptions” in 2002 and 2005, when Tung Chee Hwa and Donald Tsang respectively ran unopposed—a contested electoral process is thus the rule on the other side of the Pearl River. But what should be added is that these exceptions occurred at a time when our sister SAR went through its worst crisis of confidence ever—Tung indeed resigned before the end of his term, supposedly for health reasons. If we broaden the perspective to the world and google “elections with only one candidate”, what are the instances that we get? Yemen, Zimbabwe and North Korea… Let’s be honest, even “old democracies” fall victims of uncontested elections: in 2012, for example, some 40% of candidates ran uncontested in the state legislature elections in the United States, the highest percentage in 10 years. What kind of commentaries did that situation attract though? Acquiescence and fatalism or a genuine worry about the balance of power and the democratic outlook? Back in 2009 in Macao, there were talks of a possible challenger, the quite popular Prosecutor general Ho Chio-meng. 2009 was also a year during which many politically sensitive surveys and polls were conducted, thus giving the impression that public opinion was much more directly probed.
I partially agree with the idea that this time around what will really matter is foreseeably the new appointments and possibly the new structure of government that will be revealed at the end of December. Yet, with the challenge of the civic referendum looming, I guess it would have been a good idea for Mr Chui to at least bring the novelty of a live TV show, some kind of hybrid between a debate and a forum. Courage is indeed a component of political legitimacy.
Published in Macau Daily Times, August 22nd 2014
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