Kapok | At a snail’s pace

Eric Sautedé

Looking back at the titles of my column over the past five years, I have now exhausted almost every possible expression to convey the idea of “slow” and “minimalistic” change when it comes to characterising the pace of institutional change in our city. At times, stronger wordings crept in the body text: missed-opportunity, unsubstantial, meaningless and even failure — as in total discrepancy between the proclaimed intent and the effective outcome. Mine being an opinion column penned by a free-wheeling academic, it is only logical that my take on things could be legitimately dismissed as being only a standpoint, one among many others, and this despite the many arguments provided.

With that in mind, let’s turn to the reply given by Sonia Chan, the Secretary for administration and justice who just presented her action plan for next year, to the query of legislators Sulu Sou and Au Kam San who expressed their concern regarding the lack of progress in democratising the political system of Macao. Even though Mr Sou was kind enough to add “since 2012” in his question, Mrs Chan insisted that indeed the reform of 2012 (additional two directly-elected seats and two indirectly- elected seats in the legislature as well as 100 extra representatives in the election committee of the Chief Executive) was “one step taken towards political development” — she actually refrained from using the word democracy or democratic, unlike her predecessor. She then argued that too “frequent changes” could actually have adverse effect on the “social and economic development” of the SAR, and that it was thus better to “consolidate the outcomes” of the 2012 changes and further study the effects of these before moving forward again.

In similar fashion to the discussion related to the establishment of a new municipal level of government, Mrs Chan was very bluntly dismissive of Sou and Au’s challenging objections, whereas they were merely asking for a plan and agenda. For Mrs Chan, these are only “matters of opinion” — two, among many others. But are they really?

First, the very fact that an additional “two directly- elected seats” represent a marginal 7% increase in the overall number of seats in the legislature would tend to acknowledge the idea of a very small step taken in 2012 — the two additional indirectly-elected seats cannot really be counted as a “progress” as both slots were filled by candidates running unopposed, thus even further diluting the meagre advance. We can note furthermore that in the transcript of Mrs Chan’s response, there is no indication that she considers the December 2016 changes in the Electoral Law for the legislature as a further development.

Second, the constitutional changes of 2012 have already affected two rounds of legislative election (in 2013 and 2017), and thus a new cycle of constitutional amendments would only affect the next election (in 2021): can this be deemed too frequent? If 2012 is considered as a step, then it calls for other steps and by definition, even though the pace is slower than one of radical change — no running — it entails further developments, sooner than later if one does not want to fall.

Third, what have the very limited constitutional amendments of 2012 been conducive to? Further competition and thus pressure on senior officials? Think Fernando Chui running unopposed in 2014 and his brother becoming the vice-president of the Assembly in 2017. Further accountability of senior officials? Think Prosecutor general Ho Chio Meng being put behind bars and Fong Soi-kun deciding to raise Typhoon 8 signals from his home.

Fourth, if it is only a matter of opinion, why weren’t there (many) other legislators to support Mrs Chan and her suggestion that further democratisation can impede “socio-economic development” — read, “democracy is disruptive and we don’t want that in our harmonious society”? If they agree, which I do not doubt, why did not they say it loud and clear? And then, how do they intend to make the system truly accountable?

As once noted by William Blake, “prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by incapacity.”