A final appeal made by lawmaker Sulu Sou to the plenary of the Legislative Assembly (AL) over the decision to reject the discussion of a bill that aimed to publicize the accounts of the associations that receive funding from the government was rejected by the majority of lawmakers yesterday.
Sou’s intentions of seeing his proposal discussed were voided by 28 votes against and only four in favor, in the lawmaker’s last chance to see the project voted on at the plenary.
Sou’s appeal comes after the request to discuss and vote on the bill, initially submitted to the AL by the lawmaker back in mid-
July this year, was rejected by the President of the AL, Kou Hoi In, with the allegation that the proposal was interfering with the functioning and duties of the government.
Sou had previously submitted an appeal against Kou’s decision to the AL executive board, which also did not find support from the body that decided in favor of the president’s decision.
During his justification yesterday, the lawmaker explained that he disagrees with the decisions of both the president and the executive board, which he noted had failed to justify the rejection.
According to Sou, “In Macau there are more than 9,000 associations and the government subsidizes most of them,” he said, noting that many of them overlap with each other in their purposes and objectives, and that they also submit subsidy applications on the same or similar topics and matters.
“Without this regime [the publication of the associations’ accounts] it is impossible for citizens to know if the [public’s] money is well spent and on what. My purpose is to avoid the diversion of these public funds [to purposes other than their original stated purposes] and the waste of public funds,” he remarked.
Rejecting the idea that the bill would interfere with the duties and responsibilities of the government, Sou presented several legal arguments to the plenary, including one put forth by the former AL legal advisor Paulo Cardinal.
For Sou, the proposed bill functions only as a complement to and improvement upon government work and the laws on the topic, and does not oppose any of them.
“My bill had the purpose to introduce improvements, for example, by requesting that the Chief Executive finally establish an amount for the ceiling [that is already contained within legal provisions] at which the associations should make their accounts public, and also improve on the sanctioning regime,” Sou added.
The lawmaker stated that such a role is important to ensure that the “AL of today [does not] deny the AL of yesterday.”
Representing the AL executive board, the first secretary, lawmaker Chan Hong, justified the decision of the board by saying, “In our opinion, the premises that justified the appeal from lawmaker Sou are not valid as he stated that the president did not justify the rejection of the bill, which is not true,” adding, “Both the executive board and the president always substantiate their decisions.”
After the vote results, lawmaker Ma Chi Seng took the word in a vote declaration stating that he had voted against the acceptance of the bill.
“There is already an office for the planning and supervision of public assets (the Public Assets Supervision and Planning Office) that has these competencies,” he said, remarking also that, in his opinion, the bill, “violated the legislative initiative that belongs to the government,” he concluded.
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