Author: Severo Portela
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Rear Window | What about Scott Chiang?
It looks like the Sulu Sou “affair” has come to a standstill! The Court of First Instance adjourned the trial (aggravated disobedience Sulu Sou/Scott Chiang) sine ... -
Rear Window | Sitting on the dock of the bay
The New Year is traditionally the time to set (or not) our own petty resolutions for improvements deemed to be important (to ourselves), and here we ... -
Rear Window | Four days in Beijing
It is understandable that we would take Chief Executive Chui Sai On’s early December visit to Beijing to be nothing more than routine, although highly formal, ... -
Rear Window | Authority report
To make good use of the accurate Monday morning quarterback predictions we would say it was an easy guess to foresee that Wong Sio Chak’s day ... -
Rear Window | Sulu Sou game changer
Sulu Sou took no time in looking around and warming himself to the technicalities and subtleties – if we are to term it “protocol”- of the ... -
Rear Window | Stop making sense
Once again the Legislative Assembly killed the trade union bill on the first reading…if we are allowed to borrow from an inspired spaghetti-western style book to ... -
Rear Window | How to wear two or more hats
Regardless of status, or anything else, everybody belongs to a community, either large or as small as the Macau Special Administrative Region, has to play many ... -
Rear Window | Blind Runner
Sometimes it seems as if Macau will not allow itself a break, or an interval of nothing happening. It is as if the MSAR cannot stand ... -
Rear Window | Undermining itself
While the ripples of Hato disaster still dominate MSAR life… perhaps it is a convenient, if not an auspicious, occasion to address what prevents Macau from ... -
Rear Window | Smear tactics
Why we are not surprised a jot that the hyper-regulated campaign for the September 17th Legislative Elections could not limit itself to the realm of low ... -
Rear Window | Hato demanding accountability
Before anything else we ought to mourn for the people killed in the Typhoon Hato in the allegedly ill-prepared Macau. We underline as a disclaimer that ... -
Rear Window | Dress code for all seasons
Departing Vong Hin Fai – as an appointed bencher and one soon to replace fellow lawmaker and lawyer Leonel Alves as the Professional Interests functional constituency ... -
Rear Window | Short supply
There has been a sudden change this summer; almost all established civic associations and local heavyweights (an informal designation given to political figures in positions of ... -
Rear Window | Vexing Issues
1 – Here we go again with the four-yearly procedure to select, by universal suffrage, a 14-seat section of the 33-strong floor of the Legislative Assembly ... -
Rear Window | One Belt, One Road fascination
The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road – together The Initiative – attracted to Beijing nearly 70 countries and international organizations ... -
Rear Window | Unintended consequences
To the dismay of many a “mind your own business and nothing bad will happen to you” type of responsible citizen, political confrontation in the sister ... -
Rear Window | Festival of ideas
Trying to copy, rather borrow or emulate, from scenario-building methods in order to get a light reading on the immediate future in the Macau Special Administrative ... -
Rear Window | Flexible response
Jason Chao is no longer the VP of the pan-democrat umbrella organization NMA! Moreover, he is resigning as a member of the New Macau Association… but ... -
Rear Window | Bang on a can
It looks like this Year of the Rooster will be a noisy one in Macau! But do not let yourself be mystified by transformative things that ... -
Rear Window | Negative perfection
The charges brought up against the former Prosecutor General Ho Chio Meng seem to substantially and formally have the potential, if not to dwarf, at least ... -
Rear Window | Umbrellas in the House
It looks like a kind of swampy unease has been spreading among Macau civil society. And it has been affecting everybody, indeed, from the traditional Legislative ... -
Rear Window | There is always room for improvement
“There is always room for improvement” is a well-known educational motivator, and rather acceptable paternalistic driver, but also, and unfortunately, one of the more annoying clichés ... -
Rear Window | Soft targets
Democrats gathered under the current leadership of the New Macau Association (better known by its Portuguese acronym ANM) really do look like they have digested the ... -
Rear Window | Another walk in the park
The Chief Executive’s regular visit to the Legislative Assembly, for a three-hour long question and answer session, appears to have been a walk in the park… ... -
Rear Window | Brexit side effects
At heart, nobody believed the outcome of the London calling would be to abandon the European Union. Of course people know one way or another the ... -
Rear Window | The art of the superfluous
In order to balance the above mentioned decorative (superfluous) proposition as we have selected to title today’s column, we dare to turn to no-frills material… presented ... -
Rear Window | With a little help from Taishan
Probably… they (the government) did not see it coming. But they (the government) would do better to start adapting to civil society’s growing awareness of the ... -
Rear Window | High degree of complacency
Zhang Dejiang’s recent visit to Hong Kong was, as the saying goes, one of sticks and carrots, but with a twist: the stick sounded loud and ... -
Rear Window | Five years to upgrade Macau
Macau’s first five-year plan is out and open to public debate and suggestions during the so-called consultation period. This is a superbly ambitious and comprehensive roadmap ... -
Rear Window | Big cat a mouse click away
As Macau population came to the final stage of its peculiar mode to handle ´difficult situations´ in the detention of former Prosecutor-general Ho Chio Meng, another ... -
Rear Window | Of tigers and flies
Apparently maverick lawmaker Pereira Coutinho was one of the few MSAR public figures to comment about the detention of former Prosecutor Ho Chio Meng as being ... -
Rear Window | Now you see me, now you don´t
Once again no pasa nada Macau SAR [where nothing happens] is shaken by the detainment of a high-ranking and high-profile official for corruption. Like a recurrent ... -
Rear Window | Lotus vs Bauhinia
Apparently, the opening schedule of the bridge over the Pearl River Delta has been compromised by a set of defective pillars, thus delaying the long dreamed ... -
Rear Window | Au makes his move
For the New Macau Association leadership and one of its veteran founders, it’s definitely an “auf wiedersehen!” The departure of Au Kam San came as no ... -
Rear Window | Monsignor Stephen Lee
1. Unexpectedly the Bishop, who is almost 70 and is now known to have been dealing with some health issues and undergoing medical treatment, tended his ...
