Author: Eric Sautedé
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Kapok | Macao in a Kiang Wu cup
Anybody and everybody knows the Kiang Wu Hospital in Macao. Not for its ugly architecture that scars the whole area behind the façade of Saint Paul, ... -
Kapok | The failure of success
Of course it was meant to be all praise for the Chief Executive-elect, Ho Iat Seng, as he was being anointed by the central authorities this ... -
Kapok | What benefit of the doubt?
One should always be entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and this applies to everyone, weak or powerful, rich or poor, anonymous or famous. Such ... -
Kapok | The ugly foreigner
It’s a classic survival tactic: if anything goes wrong, blame it on the other(s) and not on yourself! The burden of responsibility all of a sudden ... -
Kapok | The great delusion
Looking at the Macao news these days, a careless reader might conclude that the upcoming Chief Executive election set for August 25 appears to be significantly ... -
Kapok | For the people?
The contrast could not be more striking: while in Hong Kong two million residents were taking to the streets to express their dissatisfaction at Chief Executive ... -
Analysis | Hong Kong, standing for freedom and justice once more
On June 9, the march against the government sponsored extradition bill felt like a recast of the protest held on July 1 2003 against the enactment ... -
Kapok | The politics of memory
Remembering and commemorating June 4, 1989 is not an easy task. First and foremost as the government that sits in Beijing forbids and effectively prevents any ... -
Kapok | Killing them not so softly
True: United Nations agencies or “bodies” can be confusing, especially when their names are long — the more specialized they are the longer the name — ... -
Kapok | The spire hiding the temple
While presiding over a regular meeting of the Cultural Heritage Council last week, Alexis Tam, the secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, grabbed the opportunity of ... -
Kapok | 22 of the dirty 400
For a reason that escapes any logic primarily concerned with fairness, only 22 members of the Legislative Assembly will participate in the Election Committee responsible for ... -
Kapok | Images speak louder than words
Upon return from Beijing, Macao’s political heavyweights staged a highly official debriefing conference highlighting key points from their study trip and their studious participation in what ... -
Kapok | There can be only one
Elections are in the air — it has become palpable. Just a few days ago, Judge Song Man Lei was for the second time appointed as ... -
Kapok | Opaque and unaccountable
How many times have you heard the assertion “information is power”? Then, if politics is not only understood literally or even figuratively, and yet, on the ... -
Kapok | Yellow is the new red
Eric Sautedé In a recent op-ed published in the South China Morning Post, renowned blogger Jason Ng draws an instructive parallel between the on-going Yellow Vests ... -
Analysis | Serving the citizens, really?
For years we have complained that the policy address was a mere exercise in shortsightedness resting on a catalogue of administrative measures, mostly expressed in quantitative ... -
Kapok | The art of irrelevance
Eric Sautedé Let’s be honest, mumbling half-hearted speeches full of empty promises year after year borders on art. More so when you happen to be an ... -
Kapok | Political will
Back in December 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was designed as an international agreement — no less — that was supposed to bind 192 parties (191 states) ... -
Kapok | Not so fantastic anymore
One of my fellow columnists with the Times has made the fight against the abusive usage of plastic an all-out effort, very often taking a very ... -
Kapok | Ethics?
Max Weber’s famous 1918 lecture entitled “Politics as a vocation” is usually remembered for the very performative definition it gives of the modern state as being ... -
Kapok | Not so cool after all
We have known for some time that air-conditioning is not only bad for the environment, but also pretty dreadful for our health. It consumes a lot ... -
Kapok | Putting a cap
Greece roughly receives the same number of tourists as Macao; around 32 million per year. Tourism in Greece represents about 20% of GDP and, directly or ... -
Kapok | Teaching history: what for?
It is not an easy thing to win the heart and mind of the people for government officials in peaceful times. Being elected is a good ... -
Kapok | Toothless labor organizations
I was recently reminded that in the years leading to the handover, the Portuguese administration had expressed the wish, almost on an annual basis, to move ... -
Kapok | Reconciling the irreconcilable
Maybe it was mere slip of the tongue. Maybe it was simply a manner of speaking. Or maybe it was truly what was meant. Yet, when ... -
Kapok | Wynn-lose or win-win?
Think about it: the viral #MeToo campaign is only five months old, and yet, it is bringing down the rich and powerful the world over! It ... -
Kapok | Unsophisticated zealots
Some people never fail to disappoint you, or rather to meet your expectations as being the least principled human beings there are. Former dancers incapable of ... -
Kapok | Up in smoke
Back in October 2014, it was announced that in order to comply with the Environmental Protection Planning of Macao (2010-2020) and the Transport Policy of Macao (2010-2020), both of which ... -
Kapok | (No) sense and sensibility
The serialized “Sulu case”, full of twists and turns ever since the New Macau Association figurehead was rightfully elected via universal suffrage to the Legislative Assembly ... -
Kapok | Scaring a monkey to safeguard the chicken
It is no secret that Macao’s political system is not only overly executive-led and highly dependent on the admonitions coming from up north, but also bogged ... -
Kapok | At a snail’s pace
Looking back at the titles of my column over the past five years, I have now exhausted almost every possible expression to convey the idea of ... -
Kapok | As little as possible
This is rather unfortunate timing. On the one hand the project of law on Labour Unions proposed by José Pereira Coutinho gets defeated during in the ... -
Kapok | Everything must change…
In The Leopard, the beautiful novel by Lampedusa set in slow-changing Sicily, Trancredi’s famous assertion that “everything must change for everything to remain the same” holds ... -
Kapok | Everything’s relative
One thing I’ve learnt over the years is to drastically lower my expectations. Mind you, I don’t mean to be ironic or even nasty: after all ... -
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, ...
