Kapok: Expected Expectations

Nobody can deny it: the announcement of the new government line-up last Monday did not come as a surprise, quite the opposite. Secretaries’ and other senior officials’ names had been the talk of the town since early November. First on social media platforms, and then splashed on the web-based liberal Aamacau.com (All About Macau, 論盡媒體) on November 8th and ultimately confirmed, in a Pravda-like announcement, on November 11th as the masthead of the front page of the Macau Daily News. Interesting to note that the city’s main pro-government and pro-China daily has lost part of its edge—it was late compared to new electronic media—and yet journalists and commentators only went berserk after the list had been anointed by the establishment’s mouthpiece, here trusted almost like the “official gazette”—can anybody imagine the Ta Kung Pao or the Oriental Daily News announcing the new government beforehand in Hong Kong and everybody else taking it for granted?
Before the summer, rumours were rife as to who would be the chosen ones, but the idea of a complete fresh start was remote, to say the least. The retirement perks bill, despite its fiasco, had confirmed that some kind of musical chairs game was at play, and the names of Lionel Leong Vai Tak as well as that of Alexis Tam Chon Weng were in the mind if not on the lips of everybody slightly interested in Macao politics. But then, the rationale was that continuity would be preserved, and that “good soldiers”, even though they had proven themselves dully unimaginative, would stay on. Even Lau Si Io, the secretary for Transport and Public Works, most probably the most unanimously derided high official, was believed to keep his portfolio. Truly, who would accept the job that is at the heart of most livelihood issues in Macao— transport and housing, and in that order, if the government’s think tank is to be trusted—and still ignominiously tainted by the Ao Man-long scandal of 2006? No wonder that Raimundo Arrais do Rosário had to be called back from his decade long spell in Europe representing Macao…
Why then the need for such an apparent “clean slate” approach? First and quite ironically, because Chui Sai On himself was returned unopposed in his Chief Executive position, thus demeaning the very nature of an election by making it totally uncompetitive. Rigidity on the one hand was calling for more flexibility on the other. Second, because a real popular demand does exist and moreover was taken into account by Chui the candidate. On the side of popular demand, the unfairness of the retirement perks bill pushed 20,000 people onto the streets in May, ultimately forcing the government to bury the bill for good. And despite the many hurdles and intimidations faced by the organisers of the Macau civic referendum of late August, close to 9,000 citizens took part in this independent probing of citizens’ preferences. Eventually, the whole of Chui’s “campaign” was about him having heard the demands of the people, as expressed by the more than 100,000 suggestions and opinions sent to his office while “on the campaign trail”. And third, the Hong Kong SAR situation, whatever the perception, positive or negative, has had a corroding effect on the self-confidence of the powers that be, and in order to prevent a possible stalemate, preemptively providing a resolute stance for (orderly) change appears to be a smart move—beyond the real necessity to do so.
And then came Li Fei, the chairman of the Macau Basic Law Committee and the Deputy Secretary-General of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, the very same man who came to Hong Kong in late August to explain the ruling of the standing committee over universal suffrage in our sister SAR, and now most notorious for having said that “Only one person [candidate] does not make an election, but too many is not proper either”. While attending a forum in Macao this week, he remarked that contrary to what some people think, deep-seated problems in Macao do not lie in the nature of political governance or stem from the fact that Macao is not democratic enough, but rather derive from Macao’s “own limitations”, the system inherited from the Portuguese colonial administration and other factors related to social and economic development. He then made it clear that “the overwhelming dominance of gambling in Macao is not in line with the overall interest of Macao” and furthermore that it is not in the “socioeconomic safety, stability and developmental interest of the mainland and the whole nation”. What is thus asked from Macao is to reinvent itself with much less gambling and much more patriotism. That for sure requires a whole new team!

Published in Macau Daily Times on December 5th 2014.

Kapok: Hong Kong and us

The recent debate over universal suffrage for the 2017 election of the Chief Executive in Hong Kong, and the much anticipated ruling made by the National People’s Congress (NPC) last Sunday over the issue have proven both fascinating and, rather unfortunately, extremely worrying.
Fascinating because the political awareness demonstrated by the Hong Kong citizenry at large has become a key feature of the distinct identity of our sister SAR. This was not originally “a given”, and it became salient only back in 2002-2003 over the debate regarding article 23 and the appending national security law with the SARS outbreak as a backdrop. Social movements and unrests of some significance have quite a long history in Hong Kong, but then the triggering causes clearly used to intertwine anti-colonial sentiments and mainly labor issues with China’s own turmoil of the time, as exemplified by the massive riots of the 1920s and 1960s. The vast demonstrations in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre in June 1989 were already encompassing a wider array of the population, but the scale of the mobilization was commensurate with the emotional shock felt by many because of the blood-stained character of the repression, and then genuine feelings of solidarity with the victims precipitated growing fears about the future of Hong Kong itself after 1997. The 2003 events mark a turning point as they took place after the handover to Chinese sovereignty and mainly gathered white-collar and professional segments of society, along with their families, and thus exhume the coming of age of what political scientists characterize as a “vibrant civil society”, targeting the government for being too weak in its commitment to uphold “a high degree of autonomy” for the SAR. Since then, the “civility” of society has grown both in strength and scope, whether one considers attendance to the June 4th vigil in Victoria Park, the youth-led Scholarism movement against patriotic education, the Occupy Central movement and of course the civil referendum of June 2014.
The worrying side derives palpably from the inflexible stance adopted by the central authorities, as the NPC ruling completely excludes popular initiatives by requiring candidates for the 2017 elections to be endorsed by a majority vote casts in a non-elected 1,200-member nominating committee, and furthermore limits the number of candidates to two or three nominees. Quite a stark contrast with the winning motion of the civil referendum that garnered the acquiescence of more than 330,000 people for a “three-track” proposal (public, nominating committee and parties) to put forward candidates! For Michael Davis, professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, this constitutes a major betrayal of the spirit and letter of both the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Hong Kong Basic Law as it subverts completely the commitment to universal suffrage. In a very strong opinion published in the South China Morning Post on September 3rd, Prof. Davis further argues that not only does this ruling undermine the rule of law, but also infringes international law as it contradicts the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, of which Hong Kong is a signatory—article 25 of that Covenant provides every citizen the right “to vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage… guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors—, and furthermore contradicts the aim, as voiced out by Deng Xiaoping himself, for Hong Kong people to “put their hearts at ease”. For all these reasons, Prof. Davis concludes—without any risk of being sacked—that “democrats in the Legislative Council have no reason to support a bill under these constraints”.
What is there for us when Article 47 of our Macao Basic Law unmistakably lacks a straightforward commitment to universal suffrage? Well, first, this acts as a reminder that Macao is also a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [see art. 40 in the 3rd section of the MBL], and thus, if we follow the UN Human Rights Committee that interpret the Covenant, that not only suffrage should be “universal and equal” but that “persons entitled to vote have a free choice of candidates”. And then, we have the statement of Li Fei, the deputy secretary general of the standing committee of the NPC sent to Hong Kong to explain the ruling: “Only one person [candidate] does not make an election, but too many is not proper either” [一個人就不是選舉，但多了也不合適]. This constitutes a prompt recall that elections are chiefly about building trust, and thus Mr Chui’s commitment to further develop democracy in Macao, as stated in his 2014 platform, appears more pressing than one would have initially expected.

Published in Macau Daily Times, September 5th 2014