It is indeed always moving to see the rich and powerful coming to the rescue of the rule of law, or more exactly the rule by law, which has to be amended because it no longer suits the interests of the happy few. The proposed alteration to the Land Law is a superb lobbying operation in the name — name only — of the general interest adorned by distorted legal, economic and political arguments. It would amount to a good laugh if this human comedy did not involve billions of MOP and the healthy development of the city at a time of renewed challenges, hence the dramatic turn of the whole story.
From a strictly aesthetic perspective, it does follow the three unity rules of neoclassical drama: a unity of action (land developers failing to develop land plots), a unity of time (25 years of provisory land concessions) and a unity of place (well-situated land plots never opened to public tendering promising juicy returns). The ending of the play should be obvious: if you meet the deadline, you get wealthier; if you miss it, you forfeit your future gains and hand back the concessions. The problem is: the parties disagree on who is to blame for the failure.The story of the 113 idle plots of land first surfaced back in 2009 thanks to a report released by the Land, Public Works and Transport Bureau (DSSOPT). In 2010-2011, 48 of these plots were recognised as not having been developed solely due to the inaction of the land grantees, and were thus meant to be recovered by the government at the leases’ expiration. Sixty-five were excluded because responsibility was shared, and the lack of proper regulatory work and planning by the government had impacted the delay. The Land Law was passed in 2013, and new constraints were imposed: article 48 states that “provisory concessions [of maximum 25 years] cannot be renewed.”With a new government being sworn in December 2014, the formerly dozing DSSOPT sprang into action, and thus land plots started to be repossessed. In June 2015, the new Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosário, made it public that out of 48 land plots, 16 had been excluded from recovery. Even though a public hearing on the case was denied in the legislature, a CCAC enquiry commissioned by the Chief Executive concluded that the only dubious aspect of the story was the lack of “proactive, systematic, and scientific communication” about the exemptions that were deemed perfectly legitimate. This was despite the fact that some legislators were shown to have directly benefited from the technical derogations, such as Angela Leong, Chui Sai Cheong and Vitor Cheung Lup Kwan. Since then, other plots have been recovered, more are at risk and court actions do not seem to favour developers.The legislator leading the charge for a revision to the Land Law, or more precisely a retroactive annexed interpretation of the law, is no other than Gabriel Tong. Mr Tong is an academic (acting dean of the law department at UMAC!), but he is also an appointed legislator and a partner in a law firm. He voted in favour of the Land Law in 2013 and now claims he was “deceived” at the time: I thought that these guys got their job because of their expertise? And can we be 100% sure that he has no conflict of interest in proposing the amendments? And then the developers would not be interested in (necessarily limited) compensations but rather to deliver on their promise? Why not earlier? Why act at best in the mid-2000s (UNESCO heritage dates to 2005), thus crippling the development of the city after the real-estate downturn of 1994?By my own calculation, based on the market, the initial land fee, the premiums and today’s construction costs, they don’t want to pass on 300% return! When there is only one team on the soccer field, I don’t see the point in providing it with extra time after July 31!
Published on Macau Daily Times, July 8th 2016
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
