Kapok: Fooling the Fools

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