Kapok: The art of irrelevance

Let’s be honest, mumbling half-hearted speeches full of empty promises year after year borders on art. More so when you happen to be an accidental leader with absolutely no talent for public encounters. Even more so when you know that nobody will really pay attention, that this will be your last policy address and that you will never be held accountable for anything. There is a Samuel Beckett-esque dimension to it, like “Waiting for Godot” in politics: it is absurd and surreal at the same time, and yet it impacts people’s lives, and it even allows human beings to die under your watch because you have been standing by instead of acting.

The absence of human empathy in the whole exercise is truly striking. Last year when Typhoon Hato had just devastated the city and killed 10 people less than three months before, the 2018 policy address started with the exhilarating words: “In accordance with the Basic Law…” (this is also true in Chinese). But clearly, last year’s circumstances were not to be blamed as the 2016 incipit was even worse — “In accordance with Article 65 of the Basic Law of Macao…” Mind you, this was not always the case. Back in March 2010, Chief Executive (CE)  Chui Sai On’s first-ever policy address started with the words “Spring is in the air…” 春暖花開，萬物欣欣向榮之際. Should we always have policy addresses delivered in early spring then?

Irony aside, something was broken between the CE and the citizens along the way, something that we can date back to the early months of Chui’s second term. The attempt at mending things now appears crude when compared to the first entry on Chui’s brand new blog posted in May 2015 and the latest one pinned two weeks ago in mid-October: we went from “Serene and calm, he wisely observes the course of the world” to “Integrating into the Greater Bay and initiating a new development”! A failed poetic attempt will always be better than repetitive gobbledygook. Chui did hit rock-bottom popularity in December 2017 when, for the first time ever, a CE’s approval rating went below the symbolic 50% line. This could thus explain the attempt at humbleness, despite the absolute dullness of the phrasing: we went from “Development Plan in Progress for Building a Perfect Home” (the official translation!) in November 2016 to “Be pragmatic yet enterprising, and share the fruits of development” in November 2017.

What will really be at stake on Nov. 15 and in the following days has not much to do with either the title or the substance of the address. We now have a five-year plan and its yearly rate of execution will certainly be close to the one announced last year — 80 percent or more! Then, the whole first part of the address will consist of sweeteners, among which the wealth partaking scheme will play an essential role. Actually, given that Chui’s reputation will never be salvaged and that he will soon be gone, I would suggest that now is the perfect time to suppress what was introduced by Edmund Ho in 2008: the wealth partaking scheme, from a purely rational point of view, is both inefficient and unfair.

No, what will really matter in two weeks’ time is the positioning of the political heavyweights for next year’s (s)election. If tradition prevails, Ho Iat Seng will be given the nod and criticisms directed at the government will be loud and persistent. If capacity — who is credited for taking the right steps in preventing another disaster when Typhoon Mangkhut blasted the city in September? — and political rectitude triumph, Secretary Wong Sio Chak will have the upper hand, and patriotic family politics, along with incompetence will be severely and durably crippled.

And if there should be no room for the king’s jester to maneuver— Secretary Tam — let’s recall that accidents do happen in Macao, with or without depressive subjects!

Published in Macau Daily Times on November 2, 2018

Kapok: Between Scylla and Charybdis

It is again that time of the year when the executive power in Macao is trying very hard to look accountable to the people: the Chief Executive (CE) solemnly and rather painfully delivers his policy address to the Assembly for the year to come, then takes questions, and subsequently the five secretaries, who make up his high-powered government, take the stage consecutively to further detail the action plan in their respective area.

This year, as usual, the exercise starts on November 15 and concludes on December 6—that is three full weeks! Now add the three to four months of preparation for that ordeal—at least on the side of the civil servants asked to work out the details that will allow their revered superior to address any possible Q&A—and you have a real measure of the supposed importance of the whole operation that has all the apparent characteristics of a government’s programme.

In pure theory, the CE should not have to do this: after all, he is elected neither by the people nor by the legislature. Given the actual structure of government, he is only accountable to the 400 members of the election committee that designates him—although on both occasions Mr Chui was “running” unopposed—and to the Central People’s Government that appoints him—in that respect, a much more demanding patron. But article 65 of the Macao Basic Law states that “the Government of the Macao Special Administrative Region” is “accountable to the Legislative Assembly of the Region” and that “it shall present regular policy addresses to the Assembly” and “answer questions raised by members of the Assembly”.

So here we are, without clear rational justification, listening to programmatic declarations that, for the most part, will either fail to materialise on time, fail to materialise properly or fail to materialise at all. Examples are numerous: social and economic housing, bridges, light rail transport, Coloane hospital, diversification of the economy, reform of the judicial system,  “scientific policy-making” and “sunshine government”, and of course a “gradual” establishment of “a democratic decision-making process” that was conceived, back in November 2010, as the pivotal condition to making fewer blunders and being resolutely less corrupt.

The show follows a very predictable script in which, among other things, business-oriented legislators lambast the unjustifiable increase in the number of civil servants, decried as contradicting the professed drive to streamline and rationalise public administration. Maybe so, but does anybody provide elements of comparison? The ratio of civil servants to the population or to the labour force is actually double what we find in Hong Kong and Singapore, respectively… And a good 34% of the civil servants are employed by the security forces in Macao!

Turning to the budget, vociferous critics denounce the prospective 12.6% increase in expenditure for the coming year at a time of economic slowdown, targeting again the ever expanding costs in personnel. Maybe, or maybe not—actually there should be more investments given the vast public reserves—but who cares? The very same legislators will vote the budget without any amendment; the very same legislators never request mid-term reports on the budget, and it is rather ironic that while the First permanent commission examines the 2017 law on public finance, it is the Third commission that reviews the execution of the past budget (2015). The left hand is not exactly aware of what the right one is doing, and what indeed matters for most lawmakers is whether or not they will get their fair share of uncompetitive public procurement—something not discussed openly in plenary sessions!

When Ng Kuok Cheong walks out of the chamber to protest against the response of the CE who considers that political development and universal suffrage are solely decided and initiated by Beijing, he is actually putting in crude light the very fact that neither the government nor most of the legislators can be trusted for things to really change. Small circles are ultimately vicious ones.

Published in Macau Daily Times, November 25, 2016

Kapok: The way ahead is long

Thanks to Linkedin, I sometimes get to read articles about management in general and human relations at work, in particular, that I would otherwise simply brush aside for lack of substance and meaning. Many a time, scholars who specialise in the management of people in a working setting are failed businessmen, lack the broadness of mind to embrace economics, miss the point of power politics and are too short in scientific rigour to engage in psychology. When they focus on cross-cultural interactions, it often gets worse: culture gets reified and learning how to communicate gets truncated into imperfect lists of dos and don’ts.
Linkedin describes itself as a “business-oriented social networking service”, so it cannot really be blamed for endlessly publishing postings, papers and quotes about what to expect from a manager. Clearly, this is a network for people who think of themselves as decision-makers, and are always eager to grab a new opportunity—“losers find excuses, winners find solutions” reads one, “you create your own opportunity” reads another.Yet, listening to the new team of secretaries in Macao addressing for the first time the legislature in the past few weeks has made me reconsider a classic dilemma that scholars in the field of human resources never fail to examine and cross-examine: the one of leadership versus management. The artificiality of the boundary between one and the other is obvious, and depending on the scale of the operation, it is often impossible to make a distinction. The head of a small organization usually has to be a leader as well as a manager as there is no way things can be delegated. Also, competing characteristics can be complementary even though the idea that one set of features cannot exist without the other is fallacious: a so-called manager can continue to operate even though the leader has no vision and an institution can continue to strive even though the vision of its leader is completely distorted—absurd visions being only bearable as long as they are not instantly lethal, especially when it comes to public administration.
In the case of Macao, I would argue that what inspired the clean slate approach of a brand new government last December after 15 years of more or less the same was having too many insulated managers and no leader. Contrary to what I believed for a long time, the absence of leadership was more consequential than essential: the burdening legacy of the previous leadership appears to have acted almost right from the start as some kind of tantalizing, paralyzing and lurking influence. Social disgruntlement coupled with a looming economic recession and a wider political shift in the mainland precipitated the need for change.Because of Easter and Qingming, the addresses by the secretaries have been dragging far too long. So as to give an even greater sense of efficiency – the one virtue that had been lacking in Chui I – everything should have been wrapped up in a week or so instead of starting March 23 and finishing April 16! Yet, with maybe the notable exception of Sonia Chan who has yet to prove herself, the secretaries have displayed a remarkable sense of commitment in restituting the daily operations of their portfolio together with the challenges—being true managers—and a commendable capacity to project their work and priorities into the future—being true leaders. They have done so with an amount of resoluteness and power of conviction not often seen in this polity. Sometimes even with humour, as when Alexis Tam Chon Weng retorted to legislator Fong Chi Keong who had quoted the most famous poem of Qu Yuan (“The way ahead is long, and I do not see any ending, yet high and low I’ll search with determination”) that he hoped he would not have to drown himself if he failed to implement his “Glorious five years’” policy! With an additional promise of accountability, let’s hope that they will be able to now work as a team to confront the many vested interests that have marred the city far too long.

Published in Macau Daily Times, April 17 2015

Kapok: Going back to politics

Politics in many a modern polity seems to have become taboo; a notion somewhat perceived as coming from the past, when ideologies reigned and ultimately proved to be the inspiration for some of the deadliest man-made catastrophes of the twentieth century. Religions are today being used as political repertoire by some organizations for which “–ism” soon become “–ist”, but far from speculating on the specific workings of better tomorrows and more egalitarian polities, radical political movements inspired by twisted reinterpretation of religion are “merely” contesting an existing political order and thus protest more than they propose. Clearly, it is a mistake to allow radicals exclusive recourse to politics.
In Macao, politics has often been reduced to politicking — the last vivid memory we have of radicalism dates back to 1966. Since the handover, most of the promises made by our executive-led government have provided perfect illustrations for the expression “vanishing in thin air”. Simply looking at policy addresses, the buzzword for the economy up to 2003 had been “restructuring”, and starting as early as November 2003, less than two years after the liberalization of gambling, this was replaced by the sacred requirement for “diversification”. In 2015, we are still dominated by the imperative to diversify, only this time under a period of “adjustment” corresponding to a “new normal” with an ultimate objective of “sustainable development”, and this no longer for the sole benefit of Macao but China. Mind you, we belong to a wider community and syphoning hundreds of billions of renminbi (the people’s money) for more than a decade had to come at a price, especially when the new head of state regards the fight against corruption as a question of survival.
Talking about “diversification”, the economist Albano Martins recently reminded us that total earnings from the MICE industry for a whole year equated to the revenues of “three hours of gambling”! No wonder Lionel Leong is betting on the development of traditional medicine in Hengqin as the way to go: not in Macao and not now!
In many democracies, promises made during electoral campaigns get buried when confronted by the reality of governing in an ever more interdependent global environment. Let’s be honest, quite a significant number of pledges made while on the campaign trail are rather theatrical: a former French president, Jacques Chirac, once said that promises were only binding for those who listen to them, and he got elected twice! Yet, issues get debated, alternatives envisioned and if a government defaults too much on its commitments, it ultimately gets sacked. In August last year while running unopposed for a new mandate, the last point on Mr Chui’s program was to further democratic development in Macao. Of course, this is only second to “sunshine policies” (meaning transparent and without corruption) and “scientific governance” (meaning based on rationality, due processes and benchmarking).
The greatest achievements in democratic development in Macao has been the suppression of the electoral registration card in order to fight electoral corruption, and the addition of a few seats in both the Legislative Assembly and the Chief Executive Election committee in order to improve representation of the people. Even mitigated by more popular forms of consultation, I sincerely doubt that these have proven successful, on either account.
Now, the newly appointed secretary for Administration and Justice, Sonia Chan, is promising to make the “indirectly elected” seats at the Assembly more competitive, the consultative committees of all hues more diverse and to establish a renewed form of municipal organization. What is at stake, and this is precisely why we have a brand new government, is to partially get rid of “vested interests”, the one thing that has crippled the healthy development of Macao for the past 15 years. But, beyond the letter of the Basic Law, why be scared of entrusting these revamped entities with political power? Just as legal changes are often not a matter of public opinion, as perfectly pointed out by Leonel Alves, grooming a new generation of leaders requires they be entrusted with authority.


Published in Macau Daily Times, April 3 2015

Kapok: Better Tomorrows

Schizophrenia seems to be a pathological feature of our modern time, and present-day Macau is no exception. On the one hand, gaming revenues have been taking an ever steeper dive for a continuous nine-month streak; on the other, the body of citizens appears to be unfazed by this fairly distressing situation – at least it would be distressing in any other part of the world – and still professes to be mainly and overly concerned by social and welfare issues in anticipation of the Chief Executive’s policy address of March 23. What is wrong with the people, some ask? Is it blindness? Are people too spoiled? Have they lost track of reality and become impervious to imminent danger because of recent (tremendous) successes? Or is it the confidence that they have in the government? Are the soothing words of Chui Sai On and Lionel Leong Vai Tak that powerful? Or is this unfazed reaction due to the casino tycoons’ take on the situation that everything is “according to expectations” and in line with the necessary “adjustment”, which seems to be the new fashionable buzz word accommodating the “new normal” formula for Macao? Could it be the situation itself – not as catastrophic as some would want it to be, but still more challenging than some would like it to be?

Let’s be honest, the results of a survey that was conducted by the Association of Macao New Vision (澳門新視角學會) about the concerns of the people and what they expect from the coming policy address came as a bit of a surprise. The ten most pressing issues, in order, are: First, a hastening of the construction of public housing; second, the strengthening of the supervision of bus services in order to solve traffic congestion issues; third, the extension of measures to control the real-estate market; and thereafter, in order, the acceleration of healthcare reform, measures to rein in inflation, controlling labor imports and protecting local employment, increasing social welfare spending, strengthening people’s training, improving education and (lastly!) promoting a diversification of the economy. When probed according to categories, people want public policies addressing social issues (72.4%), with economic policies coming a distant second (16.6%) and political and legal demands a very distant third (3.6%). As the survey was conducted in February, before the official announcement of the February plunge in gross gaming revenues (the worse drop in the past nine months), one could reasonably assume that the results could prove slightly different if the survey was to be conducted now.

Lionel Leong, being the Secretary for Economy and Finance, was the first one to react and downplay the flashing red numbers on March 3: What is characterized as a simple “decline” is said to be “in line with expectations” and a recovery – deemed not so miraculous – should occur “within one or two months.” The next day, it was Chui Sai On’s turn to comment, with the CE strongly insisting that the decline was not a threat to state capacity, and that sufficient fiscal reserve would allow the government to allocate public expenditure to welfare measures as budgeted (as if anybody doubted that, given the fact that Macao’s government is endowed with the equivalent of eight years of expenditure at constant spending, and that without even receiving any revenue). Then, of course, casino moguls, most of them in Beijing for the “two meetings” (兩會), commented that the “adjustment” was needed and that no sacrifice would be sufficient for making the dream of transforming Macao into a “world center” (for tourism and entertainment) and a “platform” (for cooperation, both regionally and with Portuguese-speaking countries) come true.

Ultimately, with an actual unemployment rate desperately locked at 1.7%, the prospect of some 20,000 new jobs created by Galaxy Phase II and Macau Studio City, and with the number of visitors having passed the 30-million threshold – why would the people worry that much about a few junkets closing down (there’s clearly too many of them anyway) and plummeting gaming revenues, when in this miserable month of February 2015 these are still roughly the same as the whole year of 2002? And then, it is very fine for Macao residents to have (on paper) the fourth-highest GDP per capita in the world, and yet only be endowed with public services that are not even a match for, let’s say, the capital city of Guangxi, Nanning. Confidence in the government, as shown in a Hong Kong University survey back in December, was in the doldrums, so it does not seem that much of a surprise that people would now trust the new team, which was ushered in two months ago, to take the right steps in addressing some very pressing issues.

Published in Macau Daily Times, March 6th 2015

Kapok: Look on the bright side

Contrary to many analysts and politicians, I don’t believe that the policy address delivered last week by our Chief Executive is the “worst ever”. Moreover, I simply refuse to side with the sneering scornful commentators who have been disparaging the wording of the address for its shallowness, unconvincing semantics and lack of specifics. Sure, just like every single year, the address reflects a lack of courage that derives from a subtle mix of personal equation—our less than charismatic leader—, a balancing act between vested interests—the “four families”, their many cronies and their concealed conflicts of interests—, and institutional design—the absence of any form of accountability that has been eroding the overall legitimacy of the whole system. Just like in years past, the address is rather short of breath when it comes to critically reviewing past achievements or lack thereof regarding the implementation of previous public policies, as if the usual process of “assess, continue, revise, substitute or stop” had absolutely no meaning in our land of milk and honey.
Despite all the free flow of renminbi, mistakes, blunders and more than baroque policy designs will ultimately engender problems that will become ever harder to disentangle—traffic and public transportation naturally spring to mind—or simply impossible to tackle due to lack of preparedness—imagine a SARS-like crisis in Macao given our 2.3 hospital beds per 1,000 residents, half the ratio of both Hong Kong and Taiwan. And here, I am not even factoring the apparent incapacity of several government departments to anticipate things to come and thus articulate a diagnosis somehow correlated with reality. Just looking into the execution of the budget for 2012, now examined in the second permanent committee of the Legislative Assembly, and in which government revenues stand at MOP145 billion and spending at MOP54 billion, one soon realizes how wrong the government had been in its prospective calculations back in November 2011 when the budget for 2012 was thought to reach revenues of MOP115 billion and spending of MOP77 billion, ultimately earning 26% more but spending 30% less! And then, on such a trivial question as home-ownership and just as Mr Chui was trying to justify the backseat position given to housing measures, both our top executive and his “grey eminence” Lao Pun Lap started quoting figures that seemed to contradict the statistics of the DSEC: do we have 82.3% of home-owners, as per the 2011 census, or 72.9% according to DSEC figures for 2006 (down from 76.7% in 2001)? And how come the trend has been inverted at a time of renewed speculation? And what is the actual relevance of that figure anyway when these concern households (not individuals) in which young people who already have jobs purposely stay longer with their parents and delay their entry into an unsympathetic real-estate market beginning a career?
Nevertheless, and in spite of all the shortcomings, this particular address is announcing a paradigm shift of some sort, one in which, for the first time ever, the “short-termism” of the whole exercise is being questioned: if not a vision yet, surely there is a wish to project the whole community in the future. This is reflected in the generic title of the address “Increasing global capacity and promoting sustainable development”, that somehow positions “well-being” and “standard of living”, the two dominant leitmotifs of the 2013 and 2012 addresses respectively, as a dependent variable of the capacity to cultivate “talents”, that is to prepare Macao’s residents to be competitive and more self-assured in an environment that is necessarily extroverted. Ultimately, the government seems to realize that by overemphasizing the traditional Weberian perspective of the “protective” father, it had been defaulting on its capacity to be a “nurturing” uncle.

Published in Macau Daily Times, November 22 2013