Kapok: Meaningfulness

Here we go – September 15 is the date for the next legislative elections. As reported by newspapers, the campaign has already started. Legislators are becoming extremely visible and outspoken, asking for all sorts of ever-more-pressing laws to be pushed through before the end of the legislative term and complaining about the slow and/or inadequate responses by the government regarding their queries and objections. Even those who are not directly elected and who did not face any competition last time around (in 2009 there was only one list of candidates, who filled the exact number of seats in each of the four functional constituencies, hence my being reluctant to call that an election for the so-called “indirectly elected” legislators) have been vocal about their commitment to the job, positioning themselves as champions of the have-nots and defenders of the spoiled majority. One of them, a seasoned pro-government businessman, even expressed bold critiques of a real-estate developer for being too eager to brandish the Basic Law and the protection of private property to defend his right to disfigure our “green lung” and vandalize our heritage in Seac Pai Van. It is quite a balancing act to secure the rights enshrined in the mini-constitution and yet make sure these rights are consistent with the original intent of protecting the community.
Concerned citizens have been on the move too. In the very same week, two associations, the Tri-Decade Action and Macau Conscience, have respectively petitioned the Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) and the newly formed Legislative Elections Affairs Commission to ask for “cleaner” elections. They have vehemently requested these reputable institutions come up with clearer guidelines as to what constitutes vote buying, and more generally speaking electoral malpractices, and of course toughen their act pertaining to these debilitating diseases of our underdeveloped democracy. This is of course of extreme importance, and yet I have serious doubts that this will be conducive to any significant change. First of all, because the CCAC was allegedly given the power to investigate vote-buying starting with the 2001 elections precisely because the 1996 had translated into, according to the official statement, “[a] huge public concern surrounding rumors of bribery and misconduct.” By any account, the 1996 elections, with the handover in perspective, were by far the most dubious to occur in our territory. Some, far too easily, put the blame on the outgoing Portuguese colonial administration. Certainly, fighting electoral corruption might not have had top priority back in 1996, but if one looks at the composition of the legislature that was then sworn in, one might be surprised to discover that some of the legislators exposed at the time are still legislators today — directly or by proxy — and for those who are not anymore, still constitute what we could describe as the highly respectable establishment of our community. There was continuity, after somewhat of an improvement for the 2001 and 2005 elections, when corruption kicked back very hard in 2009, despite the fact that the Electoral Affairs Commission had made the fight against such inadmissible practices its top priority. At the time, that led me to characterize the commission as “the biggest loser of the elections”. Today, one can see giant posters of elected members of the Assembly already in full campaign gear pinned on the façade of our central districts, despite the fact that it is illegal according to the electoral law. What is the Electoral Affairs Commission doing about it?
Once more, what would really help eradicate corruption is to be found in “meaning”: if elections were truly competitive and gave the chance for political platforms to contend, and if the legislature really mattered and was a tangible check on the executive branch, then the voters, the citizens, might be tempted to make their vote count. But then, if there is no meaning, why not take the cash, enjoy the dinner, go to a concert or benefit from a bit of extra money when Chinese New Year comes?

Kapok: Teeny Circles

The visit of Wu Bangguo to Macao, the first one ever of a Chairman of China’s National People’s Congress, made the front page of newspapers in every hue as if the whole city was welcoming this high-profile figure of the central government with a bang. Due to leave office in March, Mr Wu was a member of the exclusive Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China until November, and officially No. 3 in the national line of command. It’s no wonder that traffic around Penha Hill was so out of control and the city swarming with policemen dressed-up in flashy yellow vests and wielding silicone guns! The frenzy is ending tonight, but beware: the parking ticket emission intermission will thus be over soon!
Two seemingly separate events have brought Mr Wu to Macao: the 20th anniversary of the Macao Basic Law, our mini constitution, and the 100th birthday celebration of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Macao. Also on the agenda: meetings with the different branches of government along with extensive tours of the city and even a quick stint in Hengqing island to visit the University of Macau’s new campus—perceived as a true embodiment of a better integration between the Special Administrative Region and proper China. As far as the Basic Law is concerned, Mr Wu’s tone was far more praising than when he celebrated the 10th anniversary in Beijing: at the time, he had just been appointed and it was still the latest fad to refer to “giving full play to democracy”. The National People’s Congress headed by Mr Wu endorsed the so-called “+2+2+100” political reform package for Macao last year, a far cry from what was granted to Hong Kong, and the emphasis today seems to be more on the development of a “harmonious society” and “scientific governance”, proving again that the “high degree of autonomy” bestowed upon Macao reflects what local interests interpret as being worth fighting for.
Interestingly enough, there were two full-page ads in yesterday’s Macao Daily News to welcome Wu Bangguo: one published by the Jiangmen Town Folks Association and the other one by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Macao. Town folk associations are very common among migrant Chinese communities, and by some count there are more than 100,000 people originating from Jiangmen (a nearby district in Guangdong) in Macao. The association created in 2002 boasts more than 30,000 members. People of Jiangmen origin include Fernando Chui Sai On and Francis Tam Pak Yuen, as well as legislators such as Mr Chui’s cousin and brother, and Vitor Cheung Lup Kwan: no wonder that its mission statement reads “Love Macao, love our country; promote exchanges with our beloved hometown”.
Patriotic and grassroots associations do play a very important role in the SAR and are very tightly connected to the government and deemed pro-China. Their role is to gather the support of different sections of the society in favor of government policies in exchange for being allowed to articulate their own community-based interests and get funded to do so. These patron-clients relations date back to the colonial era: in many respects the Jiangmen Town Folks Association does play a similar role as the Neighborhood Association and the Federation of Trade Union —a revamped version of the mass line. The Chamber of Commerce belongs to a somewhat higher playing field and is more concerned with grooming the future leaders of Macao. Its strongman, Ho Yin, was China’s voice in the territory in the 1960s, and Ho Yin’s son, Edmund Ho, was himself its vice-president before he became the first Chief Executive of the SAR. Today, the vice-president of the Chamber is Ho Iat Seng, a businessman who is also the vice-president of the Legislative Assembly (indirectly (s)elected) and the only member of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress. Circles, small ones…

Kapok: The Art of Swallowing

Where on the planet can you concurrently have a vivid discussion on several controversial points of a much-needed and yet much-delayed Land Law and Urban Planning Law on the one hand, and a very contentious consultation process on a half-baked new plan to develop one of the most iconic parts of Macao next to the Macao tower on the other hand? How can one not see that there is a blatant contradiction in praising boisterously albeit against one’s own nature the many virtues of due processes and transparency, and at the same time trying to force-feed the public with a much-opposed and ill-designed plan? Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, said it himself: “The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed!” There is no lie here, just mere concealment, so Macao’s modern interpretation of it is rather “the bigger the pill, the easier it will be to swallow!”
One can feel that we are in an election year when the total number of votes for the Urban Planning Law only reached 19 “in favor” (out of a theoretical total of 29) during the first plenary reading on February 4th. Even a figure like Kwan Tsui Hang from the Macao Federation of Trade Unions, a traditional government-leaning vote-bank, decided to abstain on the grounds that “too many rules and mechanisms will be defined by administrative regulations, including the master plan”, thus excluding any oversight from the Legislature, the sole body with some members returned through universal suffrage, and forsaking too much discretionary power to the government, supposedly in the overall and superior interest of the community. The same goes for the Land Law, for which many criticisms were heard because the secretary for public works had a hard time explaining why a law would insist so much on the exceptions to open-bidding and public tendering when the government would feel that it was in the public interest; isn’t this law precisely designed to avoid the lack of transparency that used to prevail when public tendering was the exception rather than the rule? Does anybody remember that this state of affairs was quite instrumental in securing Mr Lo’s predecessor a spot in the Coloane prison for an extended lease of close to 30 years?
Now, turning back to the Sai Van lake night-market project, supposedly aimed at beefing up tourism in Macao while preserving traditional culinary delights and promoting local (if not locally-made…) memorabilia; what is wrong with governmental agencies, led by the IACM? In just five arguments delineated in a long column published in the Macao Daily News, the communist-backed Chinese daily with the widest circulation, former legislator David Chow Kam Fai hit the nail on the head in late November: the plan is against the principles of “free market.” The first stage of consultation is meaningless (only 63 opinions gathered) and results were never properly divulged; this will destroy irremediably a unique and peaceful natural scenery. The whole plan is pre-ordained and is devoid of any fairness, and finally SMEs will never be given a chance to thrive. Given the very strong opposition coming from society, the New Macao Association is perfectly right in insisting that the real issue of this consultation should be whether or not the whole project is desirable, rather than misleadingly focusing on the modalities. All the newspapers in Macao, including again the very conservative Macao Daily News (nonetheless inflating the number of participants in the latest round of consultation to 100 instead of the commonly printed figure of 40) had to report that the government was facing a very strong popular opposition, the whole project being seen as a mere nuisance bound for disaster if one recollects the ill-fated Nam Van lake bars.
Mr Chan Chak Mo, one of the two indirectly elected legislators representing “culture and social affairs” (don’t ask me how only businessmen come to represent “culture” in Macao), is a staunch proponent of the night market: can we allow this to happen just for “personal” convenience? Remember, Mr Chan is also the one who has been entrusted with the organization of the second-rate and back-to-the-future Macao food festival…

Kapok: Sealed Lips

What’s happening with TDM (Teledifusão de Macau, the public TV)? Why, all of a sudden these big changes in debate and current affairs programs in Chinese? Macau Forum (澳門論壇) was suspended at the end of December and now the “Wind and Fire Station” (風火台) is promised to a thorough reshuffling after Chinese New Year. The interruption of Macau Forum has created a stir among the pro-democrats in Macao, ultimately triggering a bold response from the New Macau Association that has decided to host an alternative New Macau Forum on the Internet. Remember, we are in an election year: any encroachment on freedom of expression is going to be more closely monitored than usual and of course will have a deeper impact on both the degree of fairness of the coming legislative campaign and its ultimate outcome.
Macau Forum started back in July 2011, and was aired every Sunday morning from an open stage in Jardim Areia Preta, opened to the public and gathering between three to four guests discussing for 50mn wide-ranging current affairs topics pertaining to Macao (general livelihood issues as well as various governmental consultations) and inviting questions from the public. This particular program was modeled on the very successful 45mn City Forum broadcasted by RTHK, Hong Kong’s public TV, in Victoria Park on Sundays since April 1980. Many acknowledge that City Forum has become one of the highlights of mediatized political debate in our twin SAR, and even more so since the hotly contested political reform package in 2010.
Let’s be honest: Macau Forum never managed to find a wide following. According to audience surveys, a maximum of 40% of the population would watch the forum occasionally. When one looks at the number of page views from the archives, only the first broadcast of the program has been watched more than 1,500 times, and only one in recent months (early September) managed to attract close to 1,000 views on the Internet, most of the installments stalling at around 200 views. Nevertheless, Macau Forum very often got quoted in the printed press the next day, and the impact was thus wider than live watching and Internet second life. Was Macau Forum ever really given a chance to strive and find an audience? It was originally presented by veteran TDM journalist Yip Kuok Va, the very same person who is presenting the Thursday evening 40mn debate program “Wind and Fire Station” today under threat: for some reason, he was discreetly replaced by two young journalists — less argumentative to put it nicely — in April 2012, and then invited guests started to be very often less controversial. Now, what was originally characterized by TDM CEO as the “most important program” of the public station has simply been dismissed after just a year and a half of existence on the pretext of “lack of human resources”: is it credible?
Nobody can say that there is absolutely no freedom of expression in Chinese electronic mass media in Macao as far as political debate is concerned: after all, the most challenging broadcast is aired daily as a call-in morning program (澳門講場) on the public radio and is so popular that every single administration has a staff summarizing every morning what is often seen as the pulse of Macao society. On Lotus TV, Macao Tales (澳門開講), a daily 1-hour call-in program, has also been gathering momentum since it started in October 2011.
So why stop Macau Forum now? Are traditional associations such as the Neighborhood Association and the General Association of Workers that afraid of getting into a democratic debate that would necessarily force them to take some distance from the government? If suspicions that some pressure has been imposed from above to shut down the program have for now remained groundless, what is really despicable is the resounding silence of the five journalists associations of Macao: not a single one of them has voiced out any concern! But how could it be otherwise when one of the most two important of these is headed by a member of the National People’s Congress and the other one by the Head of Chinese News at TDM?

This is the longer and html rich version of my column published in Macau Daily Times on January 25 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