Highest turnout ever with participation reaching 88%

A total of 88.12% of the voters (5,521) have exercised their right to vote for the representatives for the Chief Executive (CE) Election Committee.

This preliminary result was announced by the president of the Electoral Affairs Commission for the Chief Executive Election (CAECE), Judge Song Man Lei, at a press conference organized at the headquarters of the CAECE to present the preliminary results of the balloting that closed 6 p.m. yesterday.

While presenting the results, Song said the CAECE was happy that this was the highest turnout ever for this type of election, proving the new law is having positive effects.

“We managed to have a high level of participation and support from legal entities and voters in different sectors or subsectors for this election,” she said.

“This symbolizes, at the same time, that the new electoral law for the Chief Executive, that is, the amended law, is being fully implemented.”

Previously, the highest turnout for an election for the CE Election Committee was five years ago (in 2019) with the participation of 87.20% of thevoters..

In 2014, the total turnout was 82.69%.

Speaking to the media, Song said that, according to data collected at the closing of the polls, the sectors and subsectors with higher turnout were the “Labor” (96.85%), followed by the “Industrial, Commercial and Financial” (92.08%), “Education” (91.77%), “Social Service” (91.18%), “Professional” (87.27%), “Cultural” (74.67%) and “Sports” (73.44%).

Song said all work was carried out in an orderly manner with no reports of wrongdoing.

Asked by the media about the low competitiveness of the elections which, in most sectors and subsectors, have an equal number of candidates to the number of seats available, Song said, “Well, in reality, we also did a lot of publicity and promotion work.”

“We would like to have had more candidates for each subsector, more voters, more candidates, to participate in the elections for members of the electoral commission. For this year’s edition, we can see that the list of candidates already includes some new faces.”

“After this edition we will also evaluate all the work and also try [to find ways] to do more and better in terms of publicity or promotion,” she said.

Questioned on the lack of interest and knowledge of the population for this election, the president of the CAECE said not to ignore where such information comes from.

She said she believes Macau residents are well aware the election for members of the CE Election Committee took place yesterday, adding that is also part of the CAECE work to keep optimizing the work and general awareness and participation.

Elected members can sign the oath declaration starting today

At the same press conference, Song said after this morning’s final presentation and confirmation of the election results, all the elected members would be able to immediately collect a pre-made declaration at the CAECE service counter and sign it, thus making their oaths official.

The declaration already includes the statutory oath according to the legal provisions of the new law for the election of the CE, she said.

This will be the next step in the Commission’s work to prepare the CE election that should take place in October this year, she added. RM