AL Plenary | Sulu Sou gets Legislative Assembly looking to the book

In yesterday’s session at the Legislative Assembly (AL), lawmaker Sulu Sou made such an unusual proposal that it forced the president of the legislature to refer to the rulebook.

Yesterday’s session came with a busy agenda of discussing and approving three bills regarding the establishment of the tax benefit for those who registered losses of their motorized vehicles during last year’s Typhoon Hato; the changes to the law regarding the Rights of Assembly and Demonstration; and the creation of the new Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM), which will replace the current Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM).

After the proposal had faced considerable criticism from lawmakers Ng Kuok Cheong and José Pereira Coutinho, Sulu Sou proposed that instead of transferring the prior warning and definition of times, spaces and routes of demonstrations from the IACM to the Public Security Police Force (PSP), it should be transferred directly to the Chief Executive.

“I believe that we should attribute such powers to our Chief Executive,” he said. “In fact, we know that any appeal of these decisions need to be addressed by the TUI [Court of Final Appeal]. That already gives an idea of the high importance that this matter has. In that sense, I think it should be the CE deciding on this matter.”

Sou said that he had already made such a request to the AL earlier on in the day.

The response from the lawmakers was divided, with notable members both in favor and against. The situation eventually created an imbroglio for the president of the AL, Ho Iat Seng, who admitted not knowing exactly how to proceed with such a request.
However, the president noted that since the request of Sou had not been submitted at least five days before, it could not be addressed by the plenary. Ho further noted that, as far as he understood, what could be done at this stage was a vote on whether the proposal ought to be returned to the 1st Standing Committee for a detailed scrutiny.

Pereira Coutinho and Au Kam San came to the defense of Sou with the latter reaffirming the democrat position. “This is not a simple transfer of powers,” said Au. “Although at the first look it might appear to be, it is not that simple,” he continued, agreeing with Sou that the authority over such a power is not the same thing regardless of whether it is in the hands of the IACM or the PSP.

As Sou had said earlier in the session, “I cannot accept that the power to refuse a demonstration is in the hands of the police. I agree with [their involvement in terms of] time and place – that is not a problem – but we have reasons to be suspicious of the attitude of the police.”

“We have monitored how they behave; the way they put dozens of camera filming the demonstrations, the number of ‘undercover’ officers merged among the demonstrators and all the rest…”, he noted without explicitly referring to the case that led to his temporary suspension as lawmaker.

Holding the contrary view were lawmakers Song Pek Kei, Chan Wa Keong and others, who expressed their firm disagreement with Sou and his proposal.

Visibly upset, Song recalled that “the proposal has already passed through all the members [of the Committee] and through the AL services. The discussion [over it] was serious and the analysis was both technical and juridical,” she noted adding that Sou did not specify which parts violate the law.

Regarding the idea of Sou to attribute such power in the hands of the CE, Song said, “We have discussed this already – it’s on the report [from the committee],” adding that the positions of the president of IACM and of CE and not comparable.

Chan went even further saying, “to return [the bill] to the committee is a lack of respect.” The opinion was complemented by the president of the committee Ho Ion Sang, who recalled that Sou “never presented such a proposal to the committee [while it was in discussion].”

After a discussion that lasted about two hours, the lawmakers finally accepted a decision from Ho Iat Seng to put the proposal to the vote as a “provisional proposal”, which gathered only the votes in favor of Sou, Ng, Au and Coutinho, while 27 other lawmakers voted against.

In the end, the proposal from the government passed by majority, moving the duties over all demonstrations to the hands of the PSP commander.

In his vote declaration, Pereira Coutinho left a final call for the government “to have the courage to raise the problems over the excessive discretion exercised by the police,” adding, “I suggest an inspection to the decision by the police in order to avoid abuse of power.”

Tax benefit for flooded vehicles approved

The Tax Benefit law, proposed as a special bill to address the problem of the citizens whose cars and motorcycles were severely damaged during the passage of Typhoon Hato last year, has finally been discussed and approved at the Legislative Assembly (AL).

After almost one year has passed from the events that led to its creation, the law was finally approved with 29 votes in favor and only two against, by José Pereira Coutinho and Sulu Sou, who opposed all of the articles of the bill.

Ng Kuok Cheong and Au Kam San expressly voted against just one article in the bill – one that specifies that only residents who canceled the registration for their flooded vehicles by September 15 last year – but approved the rest of the bill.

Eventually the proposal passed but not without severe criticism from the pro-democracy wing that had once more Sou the center forward of the team.

In Sou’s opinion, the bill should not be a “tax benefit” but, instead a “compensation or reimbursement.”

“People believed in the government and cancelled their vehicles licenses in order to be able to benefit from this program but most of them will not,” said Sou, noting that the benefit is more like a marketing strategy from the government that would not cost “one single pataca from the public coffers.”

Besides, Sou said, “people parked, legally, in public parking lots and now they will come out with damaged vehicles without any responsibility for that,” adding, “many of them don’t want to buy new vehicles. Why can’t they collect the refund from the tax paid on the damaged vehicle as compensation?”

On the government side, Secretary for Economy and Finance Lionel Leong replied that the proposal “is not a compensation or reimbursement,” and although acknowledging that the government is not going to spend any money from the public coffers he noted, “the measure is going to help some vehicle owners with damaged vehicles through a tax relief.”

As for the date of September 15, the deputy director of the Transport Bureau, Luis Correia Gageiro said that it was settled in order to “collect all data in a short period of time to ease on processes and to avoid cases of irregularities.”

Pereira Coutinho took the opportunity to once more call on the accountability from the government naming this solution as “unfair and inadequate,” showing his disappointment with the solution finally found by the government.