Author: Eric Sautedé
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Kapok | Make no mistake
In the past few days, in the wake of the horrendous terrorist attacks in Paris, I have been confronted by the best and the worst. On ... -
Kapok | Money matters
In any polity of the world, public spending does matter. In fact, public finance is at the crux of public policy making and constitutes a necessary ... -
Kapok | Turning a blind eye
Come on, we should be gasping for breath with this Ng Lap Seng story! Keeping abreast of the twists and turns in this unraveling saga of ... -
Kapok | They talk, we listen
It was an epiphany of sorts. It was some kind of astonishment mixed with a sudden surge of exasperation: they were talking, we were listening, and ... -
Kapok | Who is in charge?
Back in my student years, I wrote a short essay about the massive peasant demonstrations that took place in France in the 1960s, which started before ... -
Kapok | Accountable responsibility
For any political leader, probing the hearts and minds of constituents is of utmost importance, whatever the political regime. In a democratic setting, elected officials have ... -
Kapok | Head counts or headaches?
Censuses have been in existence for millennia, the first known having been undertaken by the Babylonians and in Pharaonic Egypt in the Third Millennium BC. The ... -
Kapok | The Fongchikeongisation of the minds
Honestly speaking, I never expected some of my friends – many of them educated – to fall victim to arguments that only the most cynical and ... -
Kapok | Social Responsibility
The summary of the 2014 Chief Executive policy address included a small box, oddly entitled “Tips for the Elderly”, in which we were told that elderly ... -
Kapok | The difference is Macao… or is it?
While coming back from Hong Kong yesterday, I stumbled upon an old acquaintance of mine, a man of venerable age, a man of the robe—a clerical ... -
Kapok | Collective Empowerment
José Pereira Coutinho’s arguments are pretty straightforward: Macao needs a long overdue Trade Union Law for three sets of reasons. First, because this is enshrined in ... -
Kapok | Embrace a full ban!
When conflicts of interests are too blatant, public debate can only be farcical, and yet it is revealing of the challenges confronting the new government. The ... -
Kapok | Groundhog Day
In the 1993 comedy “Groundhog Day”, Bill Murray plays a weatherman who falls victim of some form of never ending time loop while reluctantly covering a ... -
Kapok | The way ahead is long
Thanks to Linkedin, I sometimes get to read articles about management in general and human relations at work, in particular, that I would otherwise simply brush ... -
Kapok: Going back to politics
Politics in many a modern polity seems to have become taboo; a notion somewhat perceived as coming from the past, when ideologies reigned and ultimately proved ... -
Kapok | Chui II and beyond
Now is the time when people like me get asked by journalists what to expect from the policy address to be delivered by the Chief Executive ... -
Kapok | Better tomorrows
Schizophrenia seems to be a pathological feature of our modern time, and present day Macau is no exception. On the one hand, gaming revenues have been ... -
Kapok | Is that normal?
One thing is certain: it is indeed pervasive! And it is meant to be so! It has almost become a mantra, one that everybody repeats in ... -
Kapok | Everything in style
This is an ancient dilemma: which one should prevail, substance over form or the opposite? For a very long time substance was always the one considered ... -
Kapok: Liberté, égalité, fraternité
I must admit that I usually don’t easily gulp overly nationalistic injunctions, and hence consider appeals to “national unity” and unquestionable flag-waving displays of national pride ... -
Kapok: Blowing hot and cold
Politicking in Macao at present is being blurred by the celebratory mood of the year-end, and Christmas has indeed a lot to do with it. With ... -
Kapok | Expected Expectations
Nobody can deny it: the announcement of the new government line-up last Monday did not come as a surprise, quite the opposite. Secretaries’ and other senior ... -
Kapok: Moaners
When I voiced concern in my columns last February that Ho Iat Seng, the newly sworn-in president of the Legislative Assembly, was openly deploring the lack ... -
Kapok | Hong Kong and us
The Occupy Central movement is, of course, about democracy and the rejection of the perceived National People’s Congress’ fool’s bargain of August 31st. The central authorities ... -
Kapok | In praise of the vouchers
Let me be honest: at first I was more than doubtful about what I was reading, and one could even say that I started looking deeper ... -
Kapok: Hong Kong and us
The recent debate over universal suffrage for the 2017 election of the Chief Executive in Hong Kong, and the much anticipated ruling made by the National ... -
Kapok: The uniqueness of being only one
Elections get me excited, even when one has no real choice and the predictability of the outcome is no less than 100%. This is uncommon, I ... -
Kapok: Drawing the line
I must admit it is often tricky to “draw the line between academic research, political commentary and direct political intervention”—to quote my former employer, and for ... -
Kapok | Contentious words
Let’s be clear, from a constitutional point of view there is nothing “illegal” in organizing an informal public consultation aka survey in the form of a ...
