Kapok | Make the results (truly) public

Eric Sautedé

Reports released by any audit commission anywhere are often written in a dreary, matter-­of-fact style, and deal with topics that, although of general interest and direct taxpayer concern, seldom capture the public’s imagination. Yet, contrary to the general belief, they habitually make a fun read. The title itself can be eye-catching – although not a Macao tradition – and of course the general conclusions and recommendations need to be unequivocal and effective, especially when your values are “professionalism, independence, objectivity and professional due care” and your mission is “to conduct independent audit on public sector organizations with respect to their utilization and management of public funds,” as it is the case for the Commission of Audit (CA) in Macao. Here, no abusive speech about the need for consensus building, but rather hard talk and professional judgment with the clear transformational objective of making the administration more accountable and capable.
The tradition runs deep in China. Censors, a mix of graft-fighters and auditors, were put in place under the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 8 CE) and then the position of Censor-in-chief became one of the most coveted positions in Imperial China up to 1911. In Republican China, the Control Yuan was and is still today in the Republic of China (Taiwan) one of the five main branches of government as imagined by Sun Yat-sen (the four others being the Executive, Legislative, Judicial and Examination yuan), and the Ministry of Audit is actually placed under the Control Yuan. In the People’s Republic of China, a National Audit Office was created in 1983 and is constitutive of the State Council – we were reminded of the existence of that institution this week when one of the Deputy Directors of the Macao Liaison Office, Zheng Zhentao, was nominated discipline inspection chief in that very office. And of course, we have the pretty notorious Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the highest internal-control institution of the Communist Party of China that brought down the like of Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang.
In Macao, the CA merely deals with the (mis)management of public funds, and is not concerned with corruption or even maladministration as these are left to the probing of the Commission Against Corruption. Although it enjoys administrative and financial autonomy, the CA reports directly to the Chief Executive. Yet, in more than 16 years it has released dozens of convincing and daring reports, first under the stewardship of long-term civil servant Mrs Fátima Choi Mei Lei and since 2009 under Mr Ho Veng On, the only element of continuity still standing today after the extensive cabinet reshuffle of December 2014.
Released last week, the latest CA report concerns the awarding of surveys and consultancy services by the government agencies, and clearly there is a lot to be improved. In terms of number, things are not so bad: out of 1,514 “contracted” projects representing more than MOP1.4 billion from January 2010 to June 2013, only 280 are considered as posing a “high risk” and 81 being “actually problematic”, for a total of only MOP153 million. More worrying though is that all of these are concentrated among a handful of administrations, the worst of which in value and/or instances being the Transport Bureau, the Public Works Bureau, the Macao Foundation and the Environmental Bureau; the main faults residing in discretionary attributions of contracts and disregard for due processes and regulations. It is all the more disturbing that these are precisely the departments where issues are the most pressing and public wariness the most vocal: city planning, transport and environment! The secretaries have immediately issued directives to all departments to carefully “study” the cases raised and the recommendations made. The Chief Executive himself has requested the utmost vigilance and indicated that this poses a wider question as to why so much expert advice needed to be outsourced.
In the end, if the CE wants his “scientific governance” promise to take hold, all the reports produced (and their authors) should be made public as the end result as much as the due processes appear to be at fault!