Kapok | Detrimental ignorance

Eric Sautedé

The results of the latest yearly survey regarding the trust Macao people place in their government is truly appalling. Not only has Mr Chui Sai On never been so unpopular, but 2017 marks also the first time his approval rating has dipped below the highly symbolic 50% bar. A low(est) score of 49.5% might not seem much, and yet it also corresponds to the largest yearly drop since Mr Chui stepped into the shoes of Mr Edmund Ho: between 2016 and 2017, he lost more than 10 percentage points! In a territory in which people do not get to elect their enlightened leader and the menu is adorned with a unique dish when selection time comes, this is quite a feat: why one would bother when one has no choice?

In 2009, when it was still possible and meaningful to administer political surveys in a Macao-based university, our questionnaire on “civic culture” had actually revealed that far from being politically apathetic the good citizens of Macao simply felt disenfranchised — they had no power over things. Given the opportunity, they indicated that they would actually vouch for a radically different institutional design in order to become at long last the masters of their own destiny: 51% of the people interrogated believed that the best way to designate the Chief Executive (CE) was through universal suffrage, whereas only 14% were satisfied with the way it was, almost 28% thought that the electoral commission electing the CE should be expanded and a mere 7% trusted Beijing to designate their leader directly.

Thus, the 2017 survey indicating such a lamentable popular support for the CE does not come as a surprise, and becomes even more humiliating when hypothetical vote intentions are being gauged: if the CE was this year returned via universal suffrage, only 20% of the Macao citizens would vote for Mr Chui! Again, the worst result ever. And the list goes on: greatest ever overall dissatisfaction (since 1999 moreover!) with the Macao government as a whole (44.3%; for the first time satisfaction has plunged below dissatisfaction); greatest ever dissatisfaction with the capacity of the government to improve the people’s livelihood (53.2%); greatest ever dissatisfaction with the capacity of the government to push for democratic development (39.2%); greatest ever dissatisfaction in the capacity of the government to protect human rights and freedom (28.3%); highest ever distrust in the Macao government (31.2%); highest ever lack of confidence in Macao’s future (26%); and the final blow comes from the question addressing the “people’s satisfaction in the Macao government’s performance after the typhoon”: 54.3% are voicing out their dissatisfaction!

To be fair, a few indicators (a minority) indicate little change: people are still okay with the performance of the government in maintaining economic prosperity (can they really be credited for that?); they are still quite confident in the capacity of the government to handle the relation with Beijing, about the policies coming from up north affecting the SAR, about the “one country, two systems” formula, about China’s own future and even pretty trustful of the central government. But then, isn’t it weird to see this disjunction? Isn’t the CE pre-screened by Beijing prior to even thinking of filling the position and isn’t he appointed by the central government? And the same goes for the secretaries. Shouldn’t Beijing be worried that its loyal executants perform so badly? How long before the level of incompetence starts affecting the people’s perception of the benevolent intentions of the capital?

Now, all the blame seems to come from the catastrophic mishandling of the murderous crisis brought forth by a devastating typhoon. Is that for sure? Will the passing of time mend the gaping distrust thus created? For us to be certain, we would need to run such surveys in Macao (this one is done by the University of Hong Kong) on a monthly basis, to better understand the fluctuations. Interestingly enough, I personally applied for such a monthly endeavor back in 2014, only to be turned down by the Macao Foundation. Time for a change? But with which independent tertiary institution?