Kapok: The colonial past

Reading what Lei Chan U had to say this week about the functions of the Permanent Council for Social Dialogue startled me somehow. During an oral interpellation addressed to the government, Legislator Lei raised some doubts not only about the role but also the achievements of the Council in establishing a truly constructive dialogue between employers and employees. He went even further in questioning the sincerity of the government as to its genuine intention — repeated numerous times — to use to the full this venue. After all, as we were aptly reminded, this “consultative body” is officially entrusted by the Chief Executive to help the government carve up labor-related policies and aims at providing employers and employees with a platform to establish an equal and effective dialogue.” In brief, the Council is there to kickstart social dialogue and help the parties, including the government, reach a “consensus”.

My initial dismay arose when I traced back the origins of this Council. To be completely honest, I was expecting the so-called “plate-form” to be just one among many other consultative bodies supposed to help the government in drafting sound public policies while preserving social harmony: there are 44 such advisory committees today and quite a number have been created recently — even though a few have been axed as there used to be 47 two years ago. Just like anything in Macao, most of these are populated by the same old “personalities”: back in 2016, the Chinese publication All About Macau had revealed that some 24 “happy few” had been sitting on at least three boards of public agencies and consultative committees. Paul Tse and the ever-loyal Vong In Fai totaled 7 such positions each, in total contradiction with Mr Chui Sai On’s 2015 pledge that no one could concurrently sit on more than three advisory bodies and for no more than six years in any case.

Most of these bodies are at best useless: after all, if they did not exist, we could have a real contradictory and public debate about policymaking, one in which expertise would tend to indicate the overall direction rather than vested petty interests dedicating all their efforts at preserving the status quo and very occasionally engaging in damage control.

But the Permanent Council for Social Dialogue is actually not that recent, as it was created back in 1987 under the auspices of Governor Joaquim Pinto Machado, one of the founding members of the Social Democratic Party of Mario Soares and appointed by the latter, then president of Portugal, to the position of governor in 1986. These were times when socialism and social-democracy meant something in the territory, and that also paved the way for the Chinese-backed “livelihood faction” led by Alexandre Ho Si-Him, to grow in popularity and win the 1988 legislative elections with the highest number of votes, thus allowing for three truly independent figures to get into the Assembly.

So indeed, Mr Lei Chan U is right: the Council is but a shadow of what it used to be! But he himself bears part of the responsibility as the two figures representing workers’ interests are himself and Choi Kam Fu, and both of them are from the Macao Federation of Trade Unions (FAOM), a very pro-establishment and pro-Beijing organization that has failed, for example, to simply propose a Trade Union Law in the past two decades. Mr Lei is vice-president of that organization and was elected a first-term legislator in September 2017 through indirect elections — that is to say that he ran for the position without any form of competition. And then on the side of the employers, one of the stellar figures representing “the employers” is none other than Kou Hoi In, himself also a legislator who was one of the most conservative voices in the Assembly, together with Dominic Sio, when the Labor Relations Law was amended back in 2015.

Indeed, members of these advisory bodies are today gate-keepers: they preserve the interests of their cast or corporation. The problem is, Mr Lei: you are one of them!

Published in Macau Daily Times on February 16, 2018

Kapok: Up in smoke

Back in October 2014, it was announced that in order to comply with the Environmental Protection Planning of Macao (2010-2020) and the Transport Policy of Macao (2010-2020), both of which had been designed at a time when “sunshine government” and “scientific policy-making” were the new-speak of a not-so-promising newly selected Chief Executive, a scheme to phase out highly-polluting vehicles would be put in place.

The decade-long Environmental Protection plan had rather limited ambitions, as the promise “to control the number of motor vehicles properly and continue to eliminate the high-pollutant emitting vehicles” were seen as “long-term” goals, only to be reached by 2016-2020. Thus, one could argue that the decision to eliminate from our roads highly-polluting vehicles was two years early, and moreover grounded on very solid data: according to a study released by the Environmental Protection Bureau at the time, “two-stroke motorcycles and older diesel vehicles aged 10 years and more” were the biggest culprits.

It was estimated that if two-stroke motorcycles made only 5% of the total number of vehicles on the road, they were responsible for 22% of all hydrocarbon emissions! And if diesel vehicles aged 10 years and more barely represented 1% of the total, yet their emission of fine particulates (PM2.5) accounted for 40% of the total! The calculation was that by phasing out at least 50% of these highly polluting vehicles all types of emissions would be reduced by 6 to 20%.

The scheme to phase out highly-polluting motorcycles was ultimately announced in June 2017, and owners willing to take their nefarious engines to the test for proper disposal were promised a MOP3,500 subsidy. It was announced this week that exactly 5,457 dirty-smoking two-wheelers had been scrapped and that this amounted to a whopping “slaughtering rate” of 52%, that would translate into a staggering reduction in emissions of between 2% to 11%. All seems to be going according to plan then — long-term included — except that two questions remain: where are the other 48% (that is more than 5,000 motorcycles) and what about the diesel-powered older trucks? Where is the scheme to phase these out and when is it going to bear fruits? Is 2020 still the goal? By my calculation, we are still missing 75% of the promise made in 2010…

If one now turns to the total number of vehicles on the road, there is no doubt that the 2015 tax hike on newly registered vehicles (going from 30%-50% to 40%-72% depending on the size and price of the car) decided by the government has had significant effects, despite the naysayers at the time, among which Zheng Anting and Angela Leong were the most vocal in the Assembly. Between 2000 and 2013, the number of private vehicles doubled, reaching more than 100,000. Up to 2015, it was still climbing by 5% on a yearly basis, reaching an all-time high of 112,794 light automobiles in January 2016: as of November 2017, the total number of light automobiles stood at 107,126, thus a reduction of 5%. An increase in tax coupled with measures to restrict parking spaces and punish illegal stationing have clearly been successful and could have been even more so if the whole network of public transportation had in parallel been entirely revamped and rationalized.

Yet, some figures do not add up: there were only 128 electric automobiles registered in Macao by November 2017, whereas there were 10,649 such vehicles in Hong Kong by the same month. In Macao, electric cars should be a must given the average length of travel per day and the overall network of roadways (only 324.1km), and yet they only make up 0.1% of private cars versus 1.8% in the other SAR. “To promote and encourage the development and application of renewable energies” was indeed also among the long-term goals of the Environmental Protection Planning of 2010…

Published in Macau Daily Times on February 2, 2018