Kapok: the more the merrier, really?

The very fact that 25 lists of candidates vying for the directly elected seats in the September 17 Legislative Assembly election have been recognised valid by the Electoral Commission should feel like a relief. After all, these ad hoc groupings are what make the legislative elections in Macao look a tad competitive, even though the 14 seats they are fighting for only represent a minority in the Assembly. Another 12 are elected by functional constituencies in which six lists will be running unopposed in five electoral colleges — two lists will take part in the selection process for the professional college, but this is merely to draw an artificial distinction between lawyers and medical doctors in Macao. The seven remaining legislators, thus making 33 altogether, are directly designated by the Chief Executive himself, supposedly for their professionalism and to preserve a harmonious relationship between the legislative and the executive branches of government. Given the recent fiasco surrounding the Land Law, one can seriously doubt the rationale, but then, we don’t hear much from these guys.

In absolute numbers, 25 lists is a lot: we had only 15 in 2001 — the first post-handover election — and then 18 in 2005, 16 in 2009 and 20 in 2013. And 25 might not be the definitive number. Programs have just started to be submitted to the Electoral Commission, and thanks to the new “loyalty pledge” (to the Special Administrative Region and the Basic Law) enclosed in article 30 of the amended electoral law, the Commission is actually endowed with the power to interpret whether these pledges have been done in good faith or not — in Hong Kong, six candidates were disqualified over such an issue in August 2016. Even though the pledges are individually signed, this could heavily cripple some of the lists, which in any case will become irrefutably admitted to enter the fray only on August 8, after all forms of judicial appeal have been exhausted. And when it comes to politics in Macao, law, even in our second system, often follows northern influences, especially when it suits small-circle local interests: back in August 2014, the civil referendum organized by Macau Conscience over the confidence (lack of thereof) people had in Mr Chui Sai On had been branded as outright “illegal” by the government as well by as sycophantic appointed legislators whose capacity to change opinion would make even a Donald blush.

Now, looking at the citizens: back in 2001, there were 160,000 registered voters, whereas we stand at 307,000 today. Only two years after the handover, one could get elected with 5,000 votes (Jorge Manuel Fão), whereas in 2013 the least-well-elected candidate (Leong Veng Chai) gathered some 6,565 suffrages. In effect and relative terms, things have thus stayed remarkably stable in the past 16 years despite the extension of the franchise: if the electorate has doubled, the number of seats submitted to universal suffrage has only grown by 40 percent, and if we anticipate that the minimum number of votes to win a seat might be a little higher this time around — let’s say 7,000 votes — then this threshold has equally only increased by 40 percent!

In the past few weeks, a lot of ink has been spent on departing legislators — depending on the language and affiliation, symbolic mourning has been quite vocal in the press regarding Leonel Alves and Chiang Chi Keong. Others might or will stay though: the Chan Chak Mo, the Fong Chi Keong and even the Kou Hoi In, a legislator since 1992. Now, even Chan Meng Kam, the so-called “king of the votes” of 2013, announced he would not run for this term: fear not, his replacement, not to say his duplicate, Kyan Su Lone, has been dutifully endorsed and groomed for months! And then, William Kuan and his chaozhou followers are joining hands with Angela Leong, so the “sunflowers” should finally get the second seat they have been desperately running after since 2005!

Let’s hope the Democrats finally resort to tactical voting: confronted with an unfair system and manipulative opponents, they owe it to their progressive electorate.

Published in Macau Daily Times, July 7, 2017

A heavy load and a long road!

And now we are getting Confucian Analects (8.7), 任重道遠! 10 pages of advertisement today (altogether) in the Macao Daily News (澳門日報). With the page A01 costing on its own MOP$200,000... When too much is not enough! I also like the one in A04: 感恩的心 感谢有你! "With a grateful heart, we are grateful to have you!" D11 is not bad either: 為澳為民，實至名歸！"Towards Macao, towards the people, fame follows merit!"

Chan Meng Kam (陳明金) celebrates his medal with a splash!

Getting a Silver Medal obviously means a lot to legislator Chan Meng Kam: 7 full pages of ad in total today were printed in Macau Daily News (澳門日報)! On these pics, one wonders who is the actual sponsor and who is the actual recipient… I can't imagine what it will be like when Mr Chan gets the Gold!

Bishop José Lai (黎鴻昇) also received the Silver Lotus, and obviously, not everybody is rejoicing… in 正報, 論盡媒體 but also (and even) in 澳門日報! I am sure his answer is: 「唔係，我相信唔係。」(No connection, I trust there is no connection)

Kapok: Too many ways to be No. 1

Being in the news for allegations of vote-buying during election time is never a great thing in terms of image, to say the least. This is even worse when it concerns the leading contender—being a tainted number one will always make you look like a loser—and then it can turn into a disaster when what is alleged eventually becomes proven and established beyond reasonable doubt. This is partly the situation of the not-for-profit group Aliança do Povo de Instituição de Macau (API), or 民眾建澳聯盟 in Chinese, which I would translate into English as the Alliance of the People for the Strengthening of Macau—the flagship organization of legislator and executive council member Chan Meng Kam. However, the condemnation of two members of the association for vote-buying during the 2013 elections has unraveled almost two years after the casting of the vote. The association today, in effect, is distinct from the list that was then led by the strongman of the Fujianese community, the Association of the United Citizens of Macao, although the logos are pretty similar—the people 民 is made of people 人人人!
Beyond the debate about the nature of the allegations (buying meals and transporting supporters to voting booths), the way the proof was obtained (a CCAC agent going undercover and interviews being conducted in a suggestive manner) and the condemnation proper (targeting two elderly supporters and being supposedly politically motivated on the part of the government), one can easily understand why the secretary for Administration and Justice, Sonia Chan, would promise to amend the electoral law before the end of the next legislative session, in the wake of the tumult: irresponsibility and lack of accountability appear to prevail because of the time lapse and confusing identities, and actually weaken the one and only institution in the whole institutional design of our SAR that demonstrates a slight democratic component.
While Song Pek Kei, the third member of Chan Meng Kam’s winning list in 2013 and vice president of the API, has started to voice her discontent at the judgment made public on Friday—that the API is appealing—along with the very vocal Chan Tak Seng, the API director who organized a very combative press conference on Tuesday, several media outlets have highlighted the contrasting fact that Mr Chan Meng Kam and his number two, Si Ka Lon, are nowhere to be seen. Coming in as the fourth-best funded association in the first quarter of 2015 by the Macau Foundation after the Federation of Trade Unions, the General Union of Neighborhood and the General Association of Women, there is no doubt that the API has all the characteristics of a quasi-political party at the service of Mr Chan Meng Kam, who is the honorary president, whereas Si Ka Lon serves as its current president.
Looking at the statutes of the association, which was only established in March 2008, one can read that the raison d’être of the whole group is not only to foster the love of the motherland and Macau, to serve the “one country two systems” principle as well as to ensure that the “people of Macao govern Macao” according to “a high degree of autonomy”, but also to provide social and welfare services. The statutes further indicate that beyond the full support it ensures to the Macau SAR government when it comes to law, economic development, people’s livelihood, the promotion of democracy (sic!) and the advancement of unity, long-term prosperity and stability, API should also explore and initiate new perspectives!
The good news is that people care. Despite the delay, the citizenry is paying attention by eagerly following the twists and turns of the affair via the press. The judicial system, the government at large and even the perpetrators—contesting is being attentive—are in full battle mode. In a banana republic, nobody cares, but even in a very truncated democracy, an increasingly vibrant civil society, supported by more sophisticated citizens, is remarkably looking for greater meaning and ultimately vaster purpose. The government cannot fail to respond to that call.

Published in Macau Daily Times, July 24th 2015

Kapok: Under (tight) Scrutiny

On the very day newly elected legislators were taking their oath, several members of Macao Conscience, a political grouping created in 2009 that has been regularly staging civic happenings, openly challenging the government and denouncing by-and-large conflict of interests affecting Macao politics, took to the streets to directly question the “claim” that legislators are genuinely representing the interests of the Macao residents. At stake, the fact that 17 legislators out of 33, or 57% of them, are still either handpicked by the Chief Executive or returned by so-called “indirect elections” for which functional constituencies did not even bother to pay lip service to the idea of political competition, one of the requirements for an election to deserve its name. 
At the heart of their appeal for the Chief Executive to come up with an agenda for political reform that could lead to a universal franchise to elect the totality of the legislature lies the promise entrenched in article 68 of the Macao Basic Law that “a majority of the [Legislative Assembly’s] members shall be elected” as well as a UN Human Rights Committee recommendation issued last March stating that “Macao should consider taking all preparatory measures with a view to introducing universal and equal suffrage in conformity with the [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] as a matter of priority”. 
This group of a handful of demonstrators delivering their petition to the government’s headquarters was headed by none other than Jason Chao, president of the New Macao Association and unsuccessful candidate to the Assembly: if you cannot bring the fight “inside”, the least you can do is to continue carrying it “outside”.
Tight scrutiny of the legislators is the vocation trumpeted by the freshly launched website aptly entitled “Macao Legislators Supervision Station”: deploring the opacity of the workings of the Assembly, the website aims to offer a comprehensive track record of the voting behavior of each individual legislator, thus creating some kind of real-time accountability system by default. It also provides detailed information about the assets owned and positions occupied by each legislator as they appear in the recently advertised Declarations of Assets posted on the website of the Judicial Court of the Macao SAR. 
Additionally, one can find the complete contact details of each lawmaker, including postal address, website, Facebook account and email address, making it possible for any citizen to engage with his or her so-called representative(s). Unfortunately, only eleven law proposals and projects as well as resolutions and propositions of debate and hearings are for now taken into consideration, but more will be added in the future. Graphic and news flashes functionalities, again individualized, are still in the making, but the result of this illustrated data collection about our legislators is already pretty striking. There, one comes to realize the deep divide that exists between elected, selected and appointed legislators—the “rubber stamp” characterization of the two latter can truly be seen by a blind man! “King of the ballot box” Chan Meng Kam is on the one hand not shy at all in divulging his assets and yet his track record in the assembly shows that he has abstained or been absent 7 times out of 11—a populist with uncertain opinions? Such is not the case for Melinda Chan Mei Yi, the accessible lady of the people: she opposes or she approves, nothing short of a yes or no… but still, more on the side of the government!
Ultimately, even the new president of the Assembly, businessman turned politician Ho Iat Seng, as well as his deputy, trade unionist Lam Heong Sang, made very ostentatious declarations on the day of their inauguration that “supervision of the government’s actions” should definitely “be reinforced in the future”! Well, talking about conflict of interests, Mr Ho is also the only member from Macao sitting on the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, the one institution supposed to interpret the Basic Law in case of a dispute and if all else has failed when it comes to enjoying a “high degree of autonomy”… With the upcoming election of the Chief Executive in 2014, there should be more to scrutinize!

Published in Macau Daily Times on October 25 2013.

Kapok: Wasted Opportunity

Right before the start of the legislative campaign I was asked to give a talk about “what to expect” from the elections. I basically raised five questions and provided simple and yet straightforward answers. Can we expect a vast overhaul of the Assembly? Certainly not! Can we expect new faces? Not really, and yet… Can we expect a few surprises? Very few, and yet… Can we expect a change in style in the campaign? Most probably as “bottom” seats will be hard-fought. Can we expect a change in the future workings of the Assembly? Only marginally, given the highly expectable overall composition of the new legislature. One soon realizes that political predictions cannot go too wrong if one accommodates enough semantic flexibility to tolerate a plurality of interpretation in one’s own prediction, or to put it more simply, if one pays due tribute to the idea that “everything is in everything”—a trick fortunetellers are well aware of. And yet, somehow, one would prefer to be really wrong sometimes, thus letting the exciting components of true surprise kick in and the benefit of uncertainty, though not fully unrestrained, bring its fair share of excitement. 
For directly elected members of the Assembly, results—not necessarily the most desirable ones, one must admit—yield two main lessons. First, the Democrats are not the highest vote-getters in these kind of elections any more, and thus will have to reflect deeply on a strategy that merely favor opposing and confronting the government, its many shortcomings and its cronies. In a more affluent society, one in which the have-nots are getting wealthier even though not at the same pace as the happy few, demands have to be formulated more in terms of alternative and therefore in displaying a capacity to propose and not only to oppose—a perspective fully acknowledged and marginally put in practice by José Pereira Coutinho. During the campaign, all the candidates, including the pro-business ones who have their reasonable share of responsibility in tilting the balance towards their own narrowly defined interests, voiced out the many hardships endured by common folks, an hypocrisy that made the Democrats’ past farsighted claims clearly inaudible. Second, organizational capacity is everything, although it plays along very dissimilar fault lines: Chan Meng Kam’s highly improbable triple win derives from his deep resources, an ethnic community base, a real populist flair for empathizing with ordinary people, the well-advertised supposed achievements of the incumbent, and an open support given by the challengers (junkets, new casino licensees and second-circle traditional political families) to old traditional vested interests (the three big Macao clans). In the case of Mak Soi Kun, the second highest vote getter, the support from the mainland was decisive and he is definitely what comes closer to a pro-Beijing camp in Macao. Finally, traditional associations shifted their support from pro-union to neighborhood related lists, as if Kwan Tsui Hang’s independence of mind had to somehow be trimmed. But potent organizational capacity also produced positive results for José Pereira Coutinho’s list and even, to a lesser degree, for Melinda Chan. The question is for the Democrats and even Coutinho if he wants to pursue further his legally innovative and policy-oriented role: how can any organization continue to be relevant for the community without proper resources (self-generated, on loan or granted)? The only answer lies in a real law on political parties, a law that would allow for a transparent and substantial public financing of political organizations that manage to garner significant results during election time.
Ultimately, only a meaningful assembly, one that is fully elected will make it possible for corruption to be curtailed, real competition to occur and sophisticated policy alternatives to be proposed: in the meantime we are stuck with royal appointments of the rust-roof “big gun” Fong Chi Keong, a close associate of the Ho’s, and the clumsy debut of a tender Ma. On what ground? Business, as usual.

Published in Macau Daily Times, October 11th 2013

Kapok: Smoke and Mirrors

Several local stakeholders, whether from the government, the civil society or of course THE industry - meaning the casino industry as they often refer to themselves - have been blowing smoke for a while regarding the measures that pave the way for a tobacco free (and therefore healthier) environment in Macao. In fact, this has been the case ever since the idea of such a new piece of legislation was aired in 2010 and the law was ultimately passed in May 2011, which, incidentally, was the same month China began enforcing a ban on smoking in public spaces, but five years after Hong Kong had passed a similar bill: holy smoke, that comes as a surprise!
The mere fact that it took a year and a half for that law to be enshrined in the official gazette serves as an indication that the pressing urge for such a tobacco control policy was far from unanimous. I routinely discuss that law with my students as an illustration for a class on “conflicts of interest,” smoking out the deceitful vested interests at play and the inner workings of a paternalist and yet clientelist political environment: after all, there is no smoke without a fire!
The composition of the Second Permanent Commission that examined the law before it was discussed and (finally) passed is rather telling. The commission is presided over by Mr Chan Chak Mo, an indirectly-elected legislator who is also the chairman of the United Association of Food and Beverage Merchants of Macao (the organizer of the shameful Macao Food Festival…) and General Manager of Future Bright, a company that operates no less than 24 restaurants and ten food courts! No wonder the law was delayed and bars, dance halls, saunas and massage parlors got a three-year reprieve and casinos a one-year exemption before having to comply for only half of their surface area! The brother of the Chief Executive, Mr Chui Sai Cheong, is also an indirectly-elected member of that commission, and so is Mr Chan Meng Kam, a directly elected casino operator, along with Mr Lee Chong Cheng, a directly elected legislator who is also the deputy director of the General Association of Workers in Macao - an association that is very vocal in defending casino workers’ rights today!
Might that be due to upcoming elections? Would that mean that things finally get discussed when competition is introduced and a pre-electoral campaign looms?
Let me parade my smoking barrels then! Sometimes things backfire, just as they did for Mrs Angela Leong, an elected legislator who can usually rely on her employees to get elected, and was so adamant about asking for a complete smoke free environment in casinos (despite the law she voted for…) that she was cornered by her own contradictions when she was confronted by challenging casino workers who suggested she should lead by example and immediately implement in the casinos she operates an absolutely smoke-free policy, instead of the “minimum 50%” required by the law! The rule of woman if not the rule of law…
The government certainly issued its regulations regarding the “less than 50%” prescription very late (October 29, 2012!), indeed, probably too late and without adequate consultation and discussion with casino operators prior to the announcement of the required instructions regarding air quality and signalization. But let’s not kid ourselves either: casino operators, all of them, are displaying an extraordinary amount of insincerity in applying the law, despite all their claims to the contrary. In all casinos I have visited since January 1, all non-smoking areas are concentrated in the most deserted parts of the premises. Isn’t “good faith,” or its contrary, legally binding somehow? Oops, another one that goes up in smoke!

Published in Macau Daily Times on January 11th 2013