Kapok: Unfair it is

In a two-round election, you follow your heart in the first round and trust your brain in the second. In Macao, we only have one round, so both heart and brain have to be mobilised together. More so because this unique shot at excessively limited democracy happens within a very unfair system.

Unfair because only 14 seats out of 33 are returned via universal suffrage. That is a mere 42.4% of the legislature elected via some kind of competitive suffrage whereas the Macao Basic Law clearly states that “the majority of its members shall be elected”. Contempt for the ultimate law of the land is thus added to injustice!

To be clear, the so-called 12 “indirectly-elected” legislators do not deserve the label of “elected”, unless exactly matching the number of candidates with the number of seats somehow fits the notion of competition.

Has there been any progress since the handover? Yes indeed, at the pace of what the Macao government considers acceptable: we had 10 elected legislators out of 27 in 2001 (37%), growing to 12 out of 29 in 2005 (41.4%) as specified in the Basic Law, and then in 2012, the government took it upon itself to add 2 directly elected seats and 2 indirectly elected seats for the 2013 elections… at the time it was deemed a “successful progress in constitutional development” — an extra percentage point for the representation of the population at large!

Unfair because of the voting system. The so-called “modified d’Hondt” mechanism, a sub-category of Party-list proportional representation, is designed to break down the totality of seats into tiny pieces. The original design was fine as far as representativeness was concerned — although it applied to only a fraction of the Assembly — but Macao introduced its own modification for the pre-handover 1992 elections: the quotient ascribed to calculate the allocation of successive seats after the first one was significantly inflated, thus making it quasi-impossible to elect four members on any single list. Obviously, the then president of the Assembly, Carlos d’Assumpção, had not taken lightly that another list, connected to the independent Chinese-backed “livelihood faction” led by Alexandre Ho Si Him, had received the most votes and managed to lodge three legislators in the 1988 chamber. 1992 then saw the first victory of Ng Kuok Cheong, on a democratic agenda, as well as the first election of Fernando Chui Sai On, on a list, strangely enough, representing the Macao Federation of Trade Unions. Since then, the number of lists in competition has soared, and split lists can even be said to be a 2017 “new normal”!

Finally, it is unfair because of the rigidity of the electoral law regarding campaigning — even more so since the December 2016 amendments — and the unbalanced witch-hunt conducted by the Electoral Affairs Commission (CAEAL). Posting a unique electoral flag outside a dedicated campaigning site is liable to prosecution. But patriotic schools instructing parents on which candidate to choose is of no concern to the Commission. The same goes for the sixty “non-electoral activities involving the distribution of benefits” [查詢法人舉辦非競選福利活動] as detailed by Jornal Tribuna de Macau earlier this week, connected to prominent traditional associations and the lists conducted by Mak Soi Kun, Si Ka Lon, Song Pek Kei, Ho Ion Sang, Wong Kit Cheng, Angela Leong and Melinda Chan. Further, the CAEAL and the CCAC are for now turning a blind eye to “non-electoral activities intended to confer benefits in which candidates are involved” [查詢候選人參加福利活動申報] (!): no less than 62 events for Wong Kit Cheng & co, 24 for Si Ka Lon & co., and an identical 13 events for Angela Leong & co. and Mak Soi Kun & co.

Not so long ago, members of such a traditional and communal association were condemned in first and second instances to prison terms and ineligibility for vote buying despite having denounced selective law enforcement and even political persecution. The times they are a-changin’!

Published in Macau Daily Times on September 15, 2017

Kapok: Fair... and competitive?

On December 30th, the official reports on the latest elections of both the Legislative Assembly (AL) and the Chief Executive (CE) were made public. At long last – as this took a whopping 16 months since the CE selection and no less than 27 months for the AL elections! For the latter, the 39-page report (in Chinese) was penned by the Commission in February 2014 and yet only released publicly more than half-way through the legislature’s mandate: how can this be justified, if not for democratic principles, at least for the sake of transparency?

The only time democracy 民主 is mentioned in the Macao Basic Law – no disconcerting mention of universal suffrage in our own BL – it is openly associated with “openness”. It furthermore appears, quite ironically, in the Annex dedicated to the selection process of the CE, which reads that the members (300 initially and now 400) of the Election Committee that designates the CE should be chosen according to an electoral law designed “in accordance with the principles of democracy and openness.”
Initially, the reports did not attract much attention. Maybe because of the timing: who wants to write (beyond a quasi repeat of the content) or even read about elections on December 31st? Maybe because of the lack of urgency after so many months on the back-burner. Maybe because of the content: only six meagre “suggestions” for each, with the disproportionate ambition – in the case of the AL – to “improve competitiveness of indirect elections and fairness” in the overall electoral process.
Since then, the debate has flared slightly. On January 4th, Jason Chao, from Macao Conscience and the New Macao Association, denounced the reports as “biased, misleading and unfair.” In the case of the AL review, it was decried for disproportionally targeting some cases while downplaying others that were later actually convicted of “vote buying”. Furthermore, Jason Chao indicated that the early promotion of some of the outgoing CE’s key political proposals – the construction of 28,000 public housing units in particular – could be construed as misuse of public resources. This first salvo was accurately and extensively covered in the Chinese press, including All About Macau and Cheng Pou, with the notable exception of Macao Daily News.
Actually, Macao Daily News presented an excellent idea on January 12th to interview some noteworthy unsuccessful candidates of 2013. Among them Agnès Lam of Civil Watch (5,225 votes), Kuan Vai Lam of Caring for Macao (5,323 votes), Paul Pun of the Betterment of our Community (2,306 votes) and Hong Weng Kuan of the Promotion of the Citizens’ Rights (only 848 votes… significant, really?) – but of course no Liberals (3,227 votes) headed by… Jason Chao. Although Agnès Lam explored in more detail certain aspects of the reports –casting doubts on the efficiency of the proposals to tackle some aspects of corruption or emphasising the problematic absence of a law for political parties [see my own take on that] – the overall message conveyed by Macao Daily News was one of consensus (how surprising!): the campaign period should not be restricted to 15 days, rather be extended, for the informal part, to the time when lists of candidates are being recognised (at the very least) and possibly up to six months before election day.
I have no doubt that an extended and reconfigured campaign period would help: the debate of ideas requires time and opportunity for reason to have a chance. Breaking away from rather outdated traditional modes of mobilisation based on narrow-interest associations – an open door for corruption and populist excesses – supposes it as a precondition. A well-­harnessed modernity demands it. A more focused Electoral Commission commands it. But then, what about the other proposals? Is providing the contact details of the members of the CE Electoral Committee enough to encourage competition? At least for the AL, we will have a public consultation. Hopefully, the discussion has just begun.

Published in Macau Daily Times, January 15th 2016

Kapok: What is to be done?

Reflecting on the past two weeks of intense debate and campaigning for the 14 seats that are up for grabs in the Legislative Assembly on September 15, one could simply say: so far so good.
On the side of the Electoral Commission, and even though there is room for improvement, the act has been cleaned up in many respects. Blatant infringements of the electoral law during the official two-weeks of campaigning have been mostly curbed, especially regarding wild and ubiquitous wall posting of promotional material in non-dedicated spaces—the only obvious exception being private lorries transporting visiting gamblers parading with posters of casino-related candidates. 
One might complain that things could have been even better, especially if some of the rules had been clarified earlier on, as exemplified in the polemic regarding posters adorning taxis. I would also note that prevention of abuses that are difficult to substantiate—especially in the case of connected associations patting voters on the shoulder through gifts and banquets beforehand —could more easily become a reality if the Electoral Affairs Commission had been operating long before March this year, and had had its ranks strengthened during the official campaign with, for example, volunteers from all the lists in the competition. In the case of some of the printed platforms being altered without prior approval of the lists, again an extended lapse of time—only one month as of now—between the publication of the acceptance to enter the fray and the start of the official campaign could help, especially if combined with a legal and transparent consultative mechanism. But let’s not be too harsh: Sunday will be a busy day for the Commission, starting with the monitoring of how voters get transported to the voting booths!
Now to the tone and style of the campaign per se. As expected, it has been buoyant, passionately debated and full of happenings—not quite Hong Kong or Taiwan yet, but getting there. 
The explosive mix of rejuvenation of the electorate, pervasiveness of electronic social media and added competition has translated into a “negative” campaigning style that has pushed the “old guard” on the defensive and helped groom a possible new generation of concerned citizens-turned-politicians. During debate time, traditional association representatives of the four hues—labor, women, neighborhood and patriotic—have been openly challenged. In being directly questioned, the “age-wise” constitutive element of their legitimacy, already pretty depleted in the case of the neighborhood folks, was seriously eroded. All the more so because a few minor lists had been precisely formed to oppose head-on well-established incumbent legislators, even the ones credited with a solid record in the Assembly—in the case of labor-oriented lists, the rustproof UPD was being challenged by at least three alternative ones! Ultimately, not only “age” was being put into question, but also whether or not these associations were “doing a good job”, delivering on their promises and possibly doing so in a consistent manner. Capacity was thus doubted. This attrition of confidence became even more salient for the casino-backed candidates, although the equation for them appeared to be early on “not too lose too much” rather than registering significant gains. If the latest rallying slogans are to be trusted, one can feel that worry has started to get hold of even the most confident heavyweights. Of course, claiming that the house is about to be engulfed by flames in the last days of the campaign has always been a classic strategic eleventh hour politicking recourse. And yet…
What Is to Be Done? When Lenin penned his pamphlet back in 1901, his main argument was that to convert the working class to Marxism despite all the odds, a political party made up of a “vanguard” should be formed to spread the ideology. Communism is gone, but Democracy is still an aspiration. A high turnout rate should probably help a different kind of vanguard making it in.

Published in Macau Daily Times, September 13th 2013