Jack Black

We have to admire the “green” persistence of António Trindade, the founding President of the Macau Association of Environmental Protection Industry and one of the founding-fathers of the MIECF which is currently running in Cotai and grown in relevance year upon year. Mr Trindade started to talk about “sustainable development” in Macau at a time and place when nobody really cared about the environment. He actually made a business of it, running a group of companies in energy, facilities and in the environment management sector. Now neither business leaders nor politicians would dare set guidelines without thinking about environment and sustainability. But Macau can do, must do much better Trindade said yesterday to the Times. “One of the things we can do is decentralize energy production and distribution. This means that instead of having a remote entity producing electricity, we could do it locally and much more efficiently.” There’s a full-hand idea.

Southeast Asia is where Macau’s advantages stand out, said Commissioner Hu Zhengyue this week laying out yet another “interchange” for “Macau, the platform. In that respect, Mr Hu pointed out that the MSAR “should take full advantage of the country’s diplomatic resources, especially to grasp the opportunities brought by the national strategy of implementing the “Belt and Road Initiatives.” The Belt and Road involves a total of 68 countries and regions. “The Belt mainly runs in a Europe direction; and the Road mainly faces Southeast Asia,” the Chinese Commissioner elaborated at a tea gathering marking the 15^th anniversary of the establishment of his office here. Mr Hu spoke highly of the drive to diversify the economy to reinforce Macau’s role as an international city and highlighted the “great importance” of the local English media in pursuing that goal.
The 2015 Policy Address “carried on the ‘Chui style’” said Professor Lou Shenghua of IPM’s School of Public Administration in a piece we published yesterday. “It covered everything, but is tepid,” he explained. Other commentators have slammed Chui Sao On’s Policy Address as an exercise in “nothingness”. However, not everyone agreed with that. Howard Stutz of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a keen observer on gaming here and in the Sin City wrote yesterday that the CE speech was “not the message Vegas wanted to hear.” “Chui…vowed to toughen regulation on the gaming industry when casino license renewals start taking place in the next few years.” Nothing new about this, because Dr Chui’s words were actually preceded by action – which is pretty rare. In December, he did a total revamp of his cabinet filling it with new blood, experience and pragmatism. The chosen secretaries came out with ideas, commitments and an apparent will of good governance, laying out sectarian policies. If not “from” the people, they all seem devoted to govern for the people, to the people. A man of few words, Chief Chui just missed the opportunity for a big-bang announcement. But again, it’s his style.