Jorge Neto Valente (L) and Miguel de Senna Fernandes
In cosmopolitan Macau, a city where around 60 percent of the total population was born abroad and where many others can trace their roots in the territory back only a single generation, the Macanese community is perhaps one of the few that can truly lay claim to the city’s past.
The community, commonly defined as those with a mixed Sino-Portuguese ethnicity and identity, wields more influence in the territory than their numbers would suggest. They are overrepresented in the fields of government, law and culture, and they hold a vast number of leadership roles in city-wide, multi-ethnic associations.
They may number as many as 8000 but, according to some predictions, just eight to nine hundred of them will participate in the 2017 Legislative Assembly (AL) election. When united, the political weight of this ethnic group represents only a trivial fraction of the more than 300,000 people in the territory who are eligible to vote.
But they are not united. When it comes to the election, members of this prominent community are as much divided in their choice of AL candidates as the rest of the electorate en masse. In political terms, there is no Macanese community at all.
Miguel de Senna Fernandes, president of the board of the Macanese Association, and renowned local architect Carlos Marreiros put this partly down to the numbers.
With less than a thousand potential voters of Sino-Portuguese identity, Senna Fernandes says that a Macanese-orientated platform would be akin to “political suicide” for any prospective legislator. It is a sentiment confirmed by Marreiros, who notes that “a genuine Macanese platform cannot attract enough voters.”
“[Legislative] candidates need more than just a Macanese platform,” said the architect, who was the president of the city’s cultural institute between 1989 and 1992. “[The Macanese are] insignificant in terms of the mathematics of the election.”
Under the current configuration of Macau’s legislature body, two of the 33 lawmakers are Macanese. They are Leonel Alberto Alves, a functional constituency lawmaker under the “professional” category and José Pereira Coutinho, the association president and list leader of Nova Esperança (New Hope), who has consecutively reclaimed his seat in every election since 2005.
Both candidates are broadly popular with the Macanese population although they stand on very different platforms. Alves is sometimes regarded as a pro- business lawmaker, while Coutinho is considered more of a “unionist” and tends to find his support base among the city’s numerous civil servants.
Members of the Macanese community told the Times this week that they tend to vote as individuals rather than as a collective. This is despite the tight- knit nature of the ethnic group, many of whom have familial or close relationships with incumbent legislators and senior government officials.
“The Macanese are more outstanding as individuals than a community,” said Marreiros. “To say that the Macanese are not united is quite skeptical. They vote in their own interests [as individuals].”
Leonel Alves announced through Ponto Final this week that he will not be standing for re-election as the AL nominee for the Macau Professional Interests Union. Meanwhile, Coutinho, who has confirmed he will once again vie for a seat in the legislature, openly admitted that New Hope has low expectations for the 2017 election. “It will be difficult to elect even one [lawmaker],” he said.
Carlos Marreiros (L) and José Pereira Coutinho
“The interests of the Macanese are very diverse,” said Marreiros. “For instance, [Pereira Coutinho], whether you agree with him or not, has a wide spectrum, claiming to represent the Macanese and the civil servants.”
At a pre-election press conference held last week, Coutinho stressed that discrimination in the public sector was a serious matter affecting the Macanese and Portuguese communities. Acting as a bridge between the key interest groups he represents, Coutinho accused the government of “taking poor care of the defense of the Portuguese language” and of sidelining job applicants with a Portuguese-sounding name.
However, Coutinho’s center- left orientation makes him an unappealing candidate to some within the Macanese community, particularly those with business interests, said Marreiros.
“There are those who do not appreciate Coutinho’s ‘unionist’ stance,” he said. “Entrepreneurs will tend to prefer other professional interests [candidates] from the business sector […] and they will be mostly Chinese.”
Senna Fernandes said that the two Macanese lawmakers are not meant to be representatives of this small community alone. While they sometimes champion Macanese interests, their election platform always covers a much wider scope and they are not specifically targeting Sino-Portuguese residents in their campaigns.
The resounding message of both Marreiros and Senna Fernandes is that the Macanese will not necessarily vote for the Macanese. This perhaps puts Macanese candidates at a disadvantage when compared with more loyal political cleavages in the city, such as the Jiangmen or Fujian groups.
Speaking to the Times yesterday, Duarte Alves, Chairman of the General Assembly of the Young Macanese Association and the son of retiring lawmaker Leonel Aves, concurred that the Macanese community tends to vote by individual interest rather than as a cohesive bloc.
“The other communities in Macau are much bigger [than the Macanese one] and so can throw their weight around,” he said. “Also, the Macanese – by their definition – are a mixed people, with one foot in the Chinese world and the other in the Portuguese world. They are less inclined to vote as a group.”
There is a possibility then, with Coutinho’s uncertainty and the withdrawal of Alves, that for the first time in the MSAR’s history, the new Legislative Assembly could feature no Macanese lawmakers.
“Coutinho is a fighter and has his own causes, and [Leonel] Alves is a brilliant legislator,” said Senna Fernandes speaking prior to the latter’s withdrawal announcement. “If either of them [do not return to the AL] this year, it would be a loss.”
Frederico Santos Rosario, the chairman of the board of the Grow uP eSports association in Macau and whose mother, Rita Santos, is responsible for managing New Hope’s election list, also cast his doubts over the future of Macanese representation in the AL.
“I believe that the biggest issue is that we don’t have a lot of candidates who are really defending the Macanese community,” he said. “Of course we have Pereira Coutinho and the other Macanese representatives, but whether they will last after this election is an issue.”
The hope may instead lie with a new generation of Macanese who are becoming increasingly active as community leaders. One of them, Jorge Neto Valente, the son of the famous lawyer of the same name, has a small chance at making his legislative debut this year.
Running as the third candidate on lawmaker Melinda Chan’s list, Alliance for Change, Valente’s ascent to the legislature is deemed unlikely. In 2013, only Chan Meng Kam’s United Citizens Association of Macau secured a third seat, while Alliance for Change obtained just one. It is speculated that bringing Valente into the fold – for this election at least – was a way to rally youth voters behind Melinda Chan.
Some from the community say that, more generally, they are worried about a growing political indifference among the Macanese youth.
“For this election, the young Macanese are not that interested in the outcome. The outcome will not be that different from previous years, so there is some [disinterest],” said Senna Fernandes. “It will be business as usual either way.”
“We need more young people who are interested in politics,” added Santos Rosario. “As a young Macanese, I believe that [the youth] still do not have much confidence in the quality of the elections.”
The worst-case scenario will see a Legislative Assembly devoid of Macanese representatives. However, this has always been a possibility in Macau due to the nature of the electoral system and the relative size of the community.
“Traditional Macanese societies do not have the scale to run today [on their own platform], because of the electoral system,” said Marreiros. To balance this, the chief executive has been given the prerogative to directly appoint Macanese legislators, if he or she chooses to do so. “This was because it is very difficult for them [the Macanese] to get elected through the direct elections.”
Even with a legislative flop, the Macanese community will still find itself well-represented in other influential areas of Macau life.
“Of course, when we talk about numbers, the Macanese vote is irrelevant,” said Senna Fernandes. “But the relevance of the community is expressed on another, non-electoral level. We don’t rely on elections to express ourselves; instead we prefer associations.”
“We can still wield influence outside of the legislature,” the leader of the Macanese Association promised.
Who are the Macanese?
The Macanese ethnic group is commonly defined as persons with a mixed Chinese and Portuguese ancestry, who normally – but not always – have a direct connection with the territory of Macau.
Originating in Macau in the 16th century, the term has come to be applied more broadly to those of a mixed Portuguese-Asiatic identity. Today, the Macanese community is often characterized by the ability of its members to simultaneously bestride the Chinese and Portuguese worlds.
Prior to the handover, many Macanese would have identified more as Portuguese, given the tendency for the Portuguese language to be spoken at home and for the children to attend Portuguese curriculum schools. But according to some studies, the 1999 handover has prompted some Macanese to reevaluate their identity, with increasing numbers of them preferring to recognize their Chinese heritage foremost.
Others, such as local architect Carlos Marreiros, advocate an even broader spectrum of what constitutes the Macanese community.
“The Sino-Portuguese descendants are wider than just the Macanese,” he told the Times. “They include the Portuguese who have been here for decades or generations. These can also be considered the Macanese.”
Under the traditional definition, there are an estimated 42,000 Macanese people worldwide. Outside of Macau, the largest communities reside in the United States (15,000), Canada (12,000), Hong Kong (1,000) and Brazil (300). DB
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