Kapok: Opaque and unaccountable

How many times have you heard the assertion “information is power”? Then, if politics is not only understood literally or even figuratively, and yet, on the conservative side — the Bismarckian “art of the possible” — one has to be reminded that politics deals with power relations or, to be more accurate, how power is distributed in society and the institutions it builds for itself.

So, clearly politics and information are connected, and just like a real market economy cannot be functional (in principle) without transparent access to information, there can be no legitimate government with a slight pretense to democracy or minimal claim to rule for the benefit of the community as a whole that will not somehow nurture open access to information.

How can public policies be grounded without an informed decision-making process? What are the chances that these policies will have positive and long-lasting effects if they are not designed from the input of all stakeholders? And how can the community feel engaged and thus fully benefit if citizens are not given access to the whole picture, thus demonstrating that indeed the government went for the “next best” possibility, at the very least?

Finally, without transparency, things will never get better, as policies will not be amended and adjusted as a result of critical appraisal, but rather are liable to be flat out abrogated and replaced based on the whimsical posturing of those who mistake populism for popular sovereignty.

Indeed, we should worry when the former editor-in-chief of Sonpou, Mr Lei Kong, is indicted for slander and fined MOP50,000 for simply having characterized the Pearl Horizon’s fiasco as a “suspected fraud” on the part of real-estate developer Polytec Asset Holdings Ltd, and for suggesting that unacceptable delays were due to constant changes in plans submitted to the Environmental Protection Bureau.

Sonpou is not any newspaper; it is the oldest running liberal-minded weekly in Chinese (born in 1989!) and Mr. Lei is unanimously respected in Macao for his independence of mind. Back in 2008, he was among the few to participate in a round-table I organized on the possible hazardous consequences of the national security law proposal. I remember him bravely stating that Macao would stay safe — the proposal was eventually passed in March 2009, but with several significant amendments — as long as Hong Kong would not enforce it!

In the Pearl Horizon case, key to Mr. Lei’s defense was the very fact that homebuyers had never been informed that the concession of the land plot on which the project was being developed would expire on 25 December 2015! Ever heard of “asymmetrical information”? And then Polytec was suing Mr Lei for MOP2 million and is now considering appealing, as Mr. Lei was declared innocent of defamation even though it was found that he had somehow breached the Civil Code. Even a professional journalist with 30 years of experience now feels deterred, so what impact will this have on aspiring young reporters? And the irony of it all is that Polytec’s defense lawyer is none other than Leonel Alves, a former legislator who helped the very liberal Press Law passed in 1990!

Besides such a blatant indirect attack over freedom of expression, the constant lack of transparency and absence of publicly available and reliable information are proving extremely detrimental to the system as a whole. In the latest survey on Macao politics commissioned to the Public Opinion Program of HKU, the Chief Executive (CE) is registering his third worst ever rating since 2009 — on par with 2014, when the whole government was revamped! And then, if there were “democratic elections” in Macao, only 29.8 percent of the people would vote yes for Mr. Chui (53.9 per cent would vote no), which is the second worst result for the incumbent CE after 2017 — remember Hato?

Now we are being told that the two studies commissioned by the government on the possible development of Macao’s gaming industry in the next two decades are being delayed. The first gaming concessions are supposed to be renewed in 2020… will we once again repeat the appalling Interim Review released in 2016?

Published in Macau Daily Times on January 11, 2019 

Kapok: Yellow is the new red

In a recent op-ed published in the South China Morning Post, renowned blogger Jason Ng draws an instructive parallel between the on-going Yellow Vests Movement in France and Hong Kong’s 2014 Occupy Movement, also identified as the Umbrella Movement.

Interestingly enough, Jason’s piece can be read under two separate titles. On Jason’s blog, the emphasis is on the balanced examination of the differences and similarities, and the conclusion clearly leans towards aporia: “Same Color, Different Path”. In the Post however, the editor obviously chose to put the stress on the argument that a more “violent” path could have yielded greater results in the case of Hong Kong:  “What France’s ‘yellow vests’ can teach Hong Kong activists about political protests and the use of violence”. Is it an over-interpretation? There is only one certainty: Jason, who happens to be a lawyer, is no violence apologist, quite the contrary!

On the side of similarities, he stresses the identical yellow color (on the umbrella and the safety vests); the key role played by social media in organizing the demos; the lack of a clearly established leadership and thus the “self-organized” attribute of the movements; the same exasperation felt by demonstrators towards traditional elites overly inclined to design pro-(big)business policies; gaping and growing social inequalities, seen, in both cases, as the “deep-rooted economic woes” [in Hong Kong and France] fueling the movements “beneath the surface”; and of course the unexpected character of the whole unravelling, because of the setting, the magnitude and the impact these occurrences are having or have had on their respective communities and far beyond.

On the side of differences, Jason firstly points to violence and rioting in France vs. peaceful resistance and civic disobedience in Hong Kong—politically grounded creative destruction vs. moral high ground; then there is the divide in political culture, with France being credited for being the birthplace of “revolution” and having a long record of regime change brought about by popular uprisings whereas Hong Kong is described as a community primarily concerned by prosperity and stability—hence the difference in popular support; and finally, of course, the dissimilitude of political regimes and accountability, with French decision-makers having to factor popular support if they wish to be (re-)elected whereas Hong Kong governing bodies primarily answer to Beijing and Xi Jinping’s strongman leadership does not seem to encourage constructive responses to pressure coming from the streets.

In this very balanced depiction, the critical difference has more to do with the political setting and who the leaders have to answer to rather than the use of violence and its hypothetical superior “benefits” in terms of results. Popular sovereignty is the key and indeed the whole Occupy Movement was triggered by the extreme frustration at the political reform package backed by the central authorities.

Actually there is an equal feeling of “unfairness” in both cases, something that Jason Ng does not emphasize enough, especially in relation to the “high hope” people had for the reforms that were supposed to be carried out. It is precisely the discrepancy between the expectations and the bitter reality that allowed deep-rooted resentments to surface, in turn further fueling this acute feeling of unfairness.

In Hong Kong, the betrayal originated in the broken promise of universal suffrage. In France, the exasperation is arising from the perceived treachery of a young and untainted president who had pledged after his election to replace the “old world,” the one in which political elites had lost the sense of common good: he is now the “president of the rich”! Indeed, the Yellow Vests map of protests does not correspond to any traditional form of contestation, and beyond the apparent concessions made by the government to restore “social harmony,” it is the temptation of authoritarian populism that is becoming pressing, even more so now that representative bodies, trade unions and political parties alike, have been declared irrelevant by both the sitting government and the protesters. Similar symptoms in different settings, pointing to the same crisis of liberal values!  

Published in Macau Daily Times on December 14, 2018

Analysis: Serving the citizens, really?

For years we have complained that the policy address was a mere exercise in shortsightedness resting on a catalogue of administrative measures, mostly expressed in quantitative terms. Quality, so it seems, was always less of a concern as long as targets were announced as having been met and social sweeteners were on the rise: the wealth-partaking scheme basically doubled since its inception in 2008.

A somewhat complete review, let alone an effective and courageous assessment of past deeds, has always been absent or so cosmetic that it boiled down to complacent bragging. Pending issues, delayed policy-making or blunt failures are never discussed, and the “looking back” (huigu) part of the policy address was always, and is still very much, narrowly understood and defined.

We have argued time and time again that without any form of critical thinking, convincing the mind and winning the heart of the people would prove impossible. All these businessmen-turned-politicians who govern us should know better: business textbooks are full of half-baked recipes to turn managers into leaders, control freaks into inspirational visionaries, plumbers into architects.

Clearly, family-run businesses striving because of oligopolistic positions and privileged access to land do not abide by the same rules, but they can read, right? If they want to stay on the pragmatic side, they can simply follow the advice of Sir Winston Churchill, who aptly remarked, “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.” Reality does bite, and sweeping pressing issues under the rug will only translate into distracting tactics.

But they could also go for more heavy-lifting reading, as both Li Keqiang and Wang Qishan, respectively China’s premier and vice-president, are said to have recommended to communist cadres the study of de Tocqueville’s “The Old Regime and the Revolution.” The point being that reform is needed if revolution is to be avoided, but that deciding what and how to reform are the key questions, something even democratic governments around the world, obsessed with procedures and plagued by elite reproduction, had somehow forgotten to prioritize.

In today’s China, reforming so-called “mass organizations”—the engagement with society—has indeed become a priority given the regime wants to fully capitalize on the effective gains of popularity derived from the sweeping and far-reaching war against corruption. Getting rid of corrupt officials does create expectations: from now on, things are going to be different; and if they are not, what’s the point? I wonder if the Macau representatives at the National’s People Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference are really doing their homework when they visit Beijing in March every year.

To be fair, in his first genuine policy address—the one delivered in November 2010 and not earlier in March, necessarily more in the continuity of his predecessor—Chui Sai On did announce quite a radical break from the past. These were still the years in the aftermath of the 2007/2008 global financial crisis, and thus the idea of recovery was shaping the rationales. Moreover, the official motto in Hu Jintao’s China was to develop a “society of moderate prosperity,” one in which inequalities would be the focus of policy- making and redistributive measures would take the lead.

No wonder, then, that Chui insisted on caring for the ones in need at the bottom as well as nurturing the majority in the middle. The very idea of not antagonizing the middle-class, which had grown not only in number but also in skills—wanting more say in the political decisions that were made in their name—derived from a precise analysis of the latest demographic trends. Hence the new fad around “political consultations,” the perfect substitute to effective democratic changes.

Promoting the former secretary for culture and social affairs indeed made perfect sense, even more so because Chui had been associated with “social concerns” since 1992, the year he became legislator for the first time.

Besides, the measures that were to be taken had a renewed ambition: they would take place in a corruption-free environment—the previous administration had been irremediably tainted by the Ao Man Long scandal—and would be based on carefully weighted initiatives. The claim to scientificity was not new, but the framing was novel: we were to have a “sunshine government” (yanguang zhengfu), and “scientific decision-making” (kexue juece) would preside over the government’s decisions. That sounded awfully close to the jargon used in the first system, but for the first (and unique) time the wealth-partaking scheme went down by MOP1,000 for permanent residents. In many respects it was both a courageous and reasonable move to make. People get used to receiving sweeteners, even though this is in total contradiction to means-tested policies that aim at correcting social inequalities.

Unfortunately, corruption was not wiped out – far from it: former Prosecutor General Ho Chio-meng (15 years in the job!) was arrested in February 2016 and one year later sentenced to 21 years’ imprisonment on multiple accounts of fraud, abuse and trafficking of power, money laundering, etc. Prior to that, the Perks’ Bill, which was eventually ditched in May 2014 after 20,000 people had taken to the streets, had shown in crude light that policy-making, far from being scientifically grounded, could be construed as the exclusive playing field for a small coterie that moreover considered itself impervious to supervision. At the time, I used the word “kleptocracy” to characterize the form of government Macau was enjoying.

The whole lot of governmental secretaries was replaced in December 2014, and promises were made in the policy address that cronies and traditional patrons would have to lay low for a while, not being able to concurrently hold more than three advising positions to the government and for no more than two terms. That corresponded to the time when the economy was ailing—gross gaming revenues had started their decline in June that year and would continue their nosedive up until the summer of 2016. Old habits die hard: nothing much changed as far as governance was concerned—except for security—and in the wake of the disastrous management of deadly typhoon Hato, Chui’s team became the least popular government ever in the short history of the Macau SAR!

Today, we have a longer time frame for policies to be implemented step-by-step, thanks to the SAR’s five-year development plan (2016-2020), and all seems to be going fine: last year, the Chief Executive announced that 80 percent of the overall plan had already been achieved and this year the percentage stands at 92 percent. Fiscal reserves have reached a whooping MOP555 billion: that’s close to five years budgeted public expenditures! And Macao is set to become the richest place per capita by 2020! But then of course, the median salary is only MOP16,000 per month, three times what it was in 2000, whereas GDP has grown almost sixfold in the same period!

Ignorance is bliss though: the last time we had a Gini Index was in 2013! And then, do you really feel like you’re in New York, Berlin or Tokyo when walking the streets of Macau? Is the public hospital in the SAR on par with the one in Singapore? Is the skyline comparable to Doha? And then let’s not mention the elephant in the room: what about democratic reform? Is the “+2+2+100” the only steps that could be taken in 20 long years? And then why was the latest UN Universal Periodic Review so critical regarding Macau’s discriminatory practices? Core principles (Macau people governing Macau and a high degree of autonomy) have value only if they are incorporated into a vision that will in turn translate into reality.

Published in Macau Daily Times on November 23, 2018

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: Political will

Back in December 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was designed as an international agreement — no less — that was supposed to bind 192 parties (191 states) in committing to reduce emissions of the six main greenhouse gases, all deemed the main culprits of global warming.

The treaty, signed under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, came into force in 2005 and the first phase of commitments was to run from 2008 to 2012 on the basis of “common but differentiated responsibilities”: contracting parties had a few years to prepare themselves and the reduction of emissions (the reference year being 1990) would affect differently each signatory, with the European Union (made up of 15 members at the time) agreeing to reduce the most (-8% to be redistributed among its members).

The intention was commendable, but right from the start the process was derailed by the non-ratification of the treaty by the United States of America. Reasons were numerous, starting with the traditional reluctance of the USA to have things imposed from the outside, the fact that the Clinton administration could not secure a two-thirds majority in the Senate, and because the American main negotiator, Vice-President Al Gore, had pushed for an even greater reduction effort than the one initially envisioned — going from -5% to -7%.

In effect, what was supposed to be binding was hollowed out by the defaulting of the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases at the time and the weak penalties imposed on non-compliant parties, which could in the end entirely escape their responsibilities as demonstrated by Canada when it withdrew from the protocol in 2011. With the Doha amendment put in place in 2012 and preparing the second stage of commitments (ending in 2020), the protocol went from Charybdis to Scylla, and as of today, the amendment has not gathered enough signatures to become effective.

Thus, it was decided during the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris that instead of going for a treaty with binding obligations and a mechanism of sanctions for non-compliance that proved ultimately unenforceable, contracting parties would sign a general “accord”, one based on voluntary commitments with a common goal for members to reduce their carbon emissions “as soon as possible” and ensure that global warming would be kept over the century “well below 2ºC” above pre-industrial levels. Now, even with American President Donald Trump deciding not to honor his predecessor’s pledge, 16 states in the USA and Puerto Rico have formed the United States Climate Alliance to uphold the goals set by the Paris agreement, thus bypassing the federal withdrawal. As of now, volition is thus proving more effective than obligation, despite the initial scorn for norms that would be devoid of might.

Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international body providing governments with the scientific basis to develop climate-related public policies, released its latest special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5ºC — not 2ºC — above pre-industrial levels. Predictions are bleak, to say the least.

The main conclusion is pretty simple: “global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate.” And this will amplify the impacts of heat-waves, destabilize marine ice sheet in Antarctica and provoke the irreversible loss of the Greenland ice sheet, and global mean sea level rise (relative to 1986-2005) will range from 0.26 to 0.77m by 2100. Any increase beyond 1.5ºC would amplify the impacts on terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal ecosystems and affect negatively their benefits to humans.

For the experts, in order to limit the rise to “only” 1.5ºC one would have to reduce the emissions of CO2 by about 45% by 2030 and reach net zero — reaching carbon neutrality — by 2050. If we were to take absolutely no action to limit greenhouse gases emissions, the temperature would then rise by 5.5ºC by 2100!

In the words of one of the scientists participating in the Panel, the report points out “the enormous benefits of keeping to 1.5ºC” and that moreover “this can be done within laws of physics and chemistry.” Political will is thus the only requirement!

Published in Macau Daily Times on October 19, 2018