Kapok: Make the results (truly) public!

Reports released by any audit commission anywhere are often written in a dreary, matter-­of-fact style, and deal with topics that, although of general interest and direct taxpayer concern, seldom capture the public’s imagination. Yet, contrary to the general belief, they habitually make a fun read. The title itself can be eye-catching – although not a Macao tradition – and of course the general conclusions and recommendations need to be unequivocal and effective, especially when your values are “professionalism, independence, objectivity and professional due care” and your mission is “to conduct independent audit on public sector organizations with respect to their utilization and management of public funds,” as it is the case for the Commission of Audit (CA) in Macao. Here, no abusive speech about the need for consensus building, but rather hard talk and professional judgment with the clear transformational objective of making the administration more accountable and capable.
The tradition runs deep in China. Censors, a mix of graft-fighters and auditors, were put in place under the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 8 CE) and then the position of Censor-in-chief became one of the most coveted positions in Imperial China up to 1911. In Republican China, the Control Yuan was and is still today in the Republic of China (Taiwan) one of the five main branches of government as imagined by Sun Yat-sen (the four others being the Executive, Legislative, Judicial and Examination yuan), and the Ministry of Audit is actually placed under the Control Yuan. In the People’s Republic of China, a National Audit Office was created in 1983 and is constitutive of the State Council – we were reminded of the existence of that institution this week when one of the Deputy Directors of the Macao Liaison Office, Zheng Zhentao, was nominated discipline inspection chief in that very office. And of course, we have the pretty notorious Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the highest internal-control institution of the Communist Party of China that brought down the like of Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang.
In Macao, the CA merely deals with the (mis)management of public funds, and is not concerned with corruption or even maladministration as these are left to the probing of the Commission Against Corruption. Although it enjoys administrative and financial autonomy, the CA reports directly to the Chief Executive. Yet, in more than 16 years it has released dozens of convincing and daring reports, first under the stewardship of long-term civil servant Mrs Fátima Choi Mei Lei and since 2009 under Mr Ho Veng On, the only element of continuity still standing today after the extensive cabinet reshuffle of December 2014.
Released last week, the latest CA report concerns the awarding of surveys and consultancy services by the government agencies, and clearly there is a lot to be improved. In terms of number, things are not so bad: out of 1,514 “contracted” projects representing more than MOP1.4 billion from January 2010 to June 2013, only 280 are considered as posing a “high risk” and 81 being “actually problematic”, for a total of only MOP153 million. More worrying though is that all of these are concentrated among a handful of administrations, the worst of which in value and/or instances being the Transport Bureau, the Public Works Bureau, the Macao Foundation and the Environmental Bureau; the main faults residing in discretionary attributions of contracts and disregard for due processes and regulations. It is all the more disturbing that these are precisely the departments where issues are the most pressing and public wariness the most vocal: city planning, transport and environment! The secretaries have immediately issued directives to all departments to carefully “study” the cases raised and the recommendations made. The Chief Executive himself has requested the utmost vigilance and indicated that this poses a wider question as to why so much expert advice needed to be outsourced.
In the end, if the CE wants his “scientific governance” promise to take hold, all the reports produced (and their authors) should be made public as the end result as much as the due processes appear to be at fault!

Published in Macau Daily Times, January 29th 2016

Kapok: Fair... and competitive?

On December 30th, the official reports on the latest elections of both the Legislative Assembly (AL) and the Chief Executive (CE) were made public. At long last – as this took a whopping 16 months since the CE selection and no less than 27 months for the AL elections! For the latter, the 39-page report (in Chinese) was penned by the Commission in February 2014 and yet only released publicly more than half-way through the legislature’s mandate: how can this be justified, if not for democratic principles, at least for the sake of transparency?

The only time democracy 民主 is mentioned in the Macao Basic Law – no disconcerting mention of universal suffrage in our own BL – it is openly associated with “openness”. It furthermore appears, quite ironically, in the Annex dedicated to the selection process of the CE, which reads that the members (300 initially and now 400) of the Election Committee that designates the CE should be chosen according to an electoral law designed “in accordance with the principles of democracy and openness.”
Initially, the reports did not attract much attention. Maybe because of the timing: who wants to write (beyond a quasi repeat of the content) or even read about elections on December 31st? Maybe because of the lack of urgency after so many months on the back-burner. Maybe because of the content: only six meagre “suggestions” for each, with the disproportionate ambition – in the case of the AL – to “improve competitiveness of indirect elections and fairness” in the overall electoral process.
Since then, the debate has flared slightly. On January 4th, Jason Chao, from Macao Conscience and the New Macao Association, denounced the reports as “biased, misleading and unfair.” In the case of the AL review, it was decried for disproportionally targeting some cases while downplaying others that were later actually convicted of “vote buying”. Furthermore, Jason Chao indicated that the early promotion of some of the outgoing CE’s key political proposals – the construction of 28,000 public housing units in particular – could be construed as misuse of public resources. This first salvo was accurately and extensively covered in the Chinese press, including All About Macau and Cheng Pou, with the notable exception of Macao Daily News.
Actually, Macao Daily News presented an excellent idea on January 12th to interview some noteworthy unsuccessful candidates of 2013. Among them Agnès Lam of Civil Watch (5,225 votes), Kuan Vai Lam of Caring for Macao (5,323 votes), Paul Pun of the Betterment of our Community (2,306 votes) and Hong Weng Kuan of the Promotion of the Citizens’ Rights (only 848 votes… significant, really?) – but of course no Liberals (3,227 votes) headed by… Jason Chao. Although Agnès Lam explored in more detail certain aspects of the reports –casting doubts on the efficiency of the proposals to tackle some aspects of corruption or emphasising the problematic absence of a law for political parties [see my own take on that] – the overall message conveyed by Macao Daily News was one of consensus (how surprising!): the campaign period should not be restricted to 15 days, rather be extended, for the informal part, to the time when lists of candidates are being recognised (at the very least) and possibly up to six months before election day.
I have no doubt that an extended and reconfigured campaign period would help: the debate of ideas requires time and opportunity for reason to have a chance. Breaking away from rather outdated traditional modes of mobilisation based on narrow-interest associations – an open door for corruption and populist excesses – supposes it as a precondition. A well-­harnessed modernity demands it. A more focused Electoral Commission commands it. But then, what about the other proposals? Is providing the contact details of the members of the CE Electoral Committee enough to encourage competition? At least for the AL, we will have a public consultation. Hopefully, the discussion has just begun.

Published in Macau Daily Times, January 15th 2016