The Socialist Party of the Republic of Portugal has filed a complaint with the country’s National Election Commission about a suspected violation by Macau lawmaker José Pereira Coutinho, who is also a councilor of the Portuguese Community for Mainland China, Macau and Hong Kong.
The complaint made is related to the manner in which Coutinho and his association, the Civil Servant Association of Macau (Associação dos Trabalhadores da Função Pública de Macau), has acted during the current parliamentary election.
For this election, the Portuguese National Election Commission sent out ballots to Portuguese citizens living outside of the country. After marking their ballots, voters were requested to send their ballots back to the Commission no later than October 6, the election day in Portugal.
Macau media outlet Plataforma reported that it had obtained the complaint letter that the president of the socialists’ “Outside Europe” constituency Paulo Pisco sent to the National Election Commission.
According to the media outlet, the letter pointed out that Coutinho, in the name of his association, “was contacting eligible voters to assist them to send the filled ballots back to Portugal.”
Voters residing outside of the country’s territory are eligible to vote for candidates running in the “Outside Europe” region of the election.
The letter pointed out that several people with whom the Party had got in touch disclosed that they “had received phone calls claiming to be from the Civil Servant Association,” which claimed the voters could send their filled ballots to the association and it will “handle the rest.”
As a result, the Socialist Party feared it might affect the “confidentiality” of the voting process.
These phone calls, according to the report, were conducted in Chinese. “It expresses the targeting of Portuguese citizens who do not possess competence in the language,” reported the media outlet.
Coutinho and his colleague at the association, Rita Santos, refused to comment on the case when contacted by the media outlet.
This is not the first time the Macau lawmaker has stirred up a controversy. In 2015, he disclosed that he would be running in the Portuguese parliamentary election of that year on a ticket named “We, the Citizens!” (Nós, Cidadãos!).
At that time, he expressed his hope of success, which would mean a first in the world, with one person holding two seats in lawmaking entities in two different independent jurisdictions. The governments in Macau and Beijing expressed their concerns, as it would mean double loyalty.
Coutinho has proved a popular candidate in the overseas Portuguese community. In 2015, he won 2,158 votes in the Portuguese Community Council Election. In contrast, the representative in Brazil had 462 votes and, in Germany, 245. AL
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