Lawmakers call on Li to pay attention to democratization

The Macau Community Development Initiative (MCDI), along with lawmakers Ng Kuok Cheong and Au Kin Sam, delivered a letter, written to Li Keqiang, China’s Prime Minister, to the government headquarters. In the letter, Li Keqiang is urged to pay close attention to Macau’s democratic political system. Moreover, it says “selecting the Chief Executive from among small groups leads to the SAR’s administration suffering from collusion between the government and the businessmen.” The letter also reads that “indirectly elected lawmakers occupy the majority of the Legislative Assembly (AL), and that does not reflect real public opinions”.
The group considers that Chui Sai On has not pushed Macau’s political reform forward.  As written in the letter, “the current Chief Executive, Chui, in his re-election proposal said that he would push Macau’s democratic politics forward according to the basic law, but he has instead been shifting towards political reform since his re-election.”
Earlier, in a survey delivered by the group to the AL, 60 percent of the interviewees support the election of a CE by universal suffrage, with two thirds of them considering that this policy should be achieved in 2019. Over 70 percent of the interviewees hope AL will implement universal suffrage in the future.
Recently, the CE delivered a legislation law amendment bill with no direct election position added. As to the CE election system which has to be initiated by the CE, “nothing has changed, and if the situation continues to be like this, [we are] afraid that there will be nothing done during [Chui’s] term,” the letter reads.