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: The Ins and Outs of Expertise

More often than not unsolicited comments and suggestions are considered inappropriate. If we leave aside the deference aspect of the rule, and therefore the sheer respect for authority in a pyramidal organization, there are many reasons that can justify this widely shared custom, among which the “communication” dimension is for me the most important.
To put it simply, communication is about relating to individuals in society, and in order for the communicational transaction to take place, one individual must speak and the other one has to listen and understand, and usually alternatively speak or reply and be listened to and understood. When the word “communications” appeared in Europe at the end of the thirteenth century, it referred to “ways of being together.”
By that token, an unsolicited comment is deemed inappropriate because the interlocutor (in linguistics, the person to whom speech is directed) is not willing or simply ready to listen — and here, I am not even considering the answering back or amending process of one’s point of view.
Reading about recent comments made in June by “Mainland scholars,” as they are characterized in the press, I found myself in the very awkward position where everything was right and yet everything felt wrong. These two scholars, Zhu Shiha, from the Central Socialism Institute in Beijing, and Chen Xin, from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, were basically voicing the idea that the central authorities in Beijing were quite likely to allow more democracy in Macao in the future.
Chinese culture does put much emphasis on etiquette — “saving face” has become an everyday reference — and it is therefore not surprising that these comments were of course solicited ones, made at the invitation of a local institution, the Macau Polytechnic Institute, that has made a specialty of exploring the “one-country-two-systems” as a singular object of investigation, dedicating a whole research center with a fully-fledged academic journal to it.
What is less right though is that the Central Socialism Institute created in 1946 is a typical United Front institution that although staffed with non-communist members has a mission to bring unity under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in itself seems a bit less political, but Mr Chen, despite his doctorate in law, is from the Institute of European Studies and speaks very good Hungarian, if his online bio is to trusted, but has indeed a very limited knowledge of the ins and outs of political reform in Macao under the “one country, two systems” formula. Mr Zhu, the expert, went as far as saying that the central government, being more satisfied with the political conditions in Macao, “would likely allow more room for democratic development in Macao than in Hong Kong.”
Is Mr Zhu aware that the political reform package has already been passed for Hong Kong, and that the Chief Executive and the Legco members in the former British colony will be returned through universal suffrage starting respectively in 2017 and 2020? Is he aware than the very discreet Bureau for Political Studies created by Chui Sai On in 2010 made it public in early April that an agenda for the implementation of universal suffrage was, as of now, not relevant to consider for Macao?
Ultimately, should we be mad at Mr Lao Pun Lap, coordinator of the above-mentioned bureau for not disclosing the “scientific rationale” behind his statement, contrary to the very foundation of his office? Should we be worried for Hong Kong considering that what really matters for the central authorities appears to be who is allowed to run for elections and not how the candidates are elected? And when does an unsolicited opinion cease to be inappropriate?

Published in Macau Daily Times, June 22 2012