The 2016/2017 legislative year, which starts October 17, will be a year with many challenges for the Legislative Assembly (AL) and its lawmakers, said the AL’s president Ho Iat Seng, who aimed to conduct an overall evaluation of the legislative year that just closed, during a meeting with the press on Friday.
Ho explained that there are many important laws to work on after the AL’s annual break, emphasizing that one of the most pressing concerns would be time. He recalled the incomplete work on laws from the third legislative session that moved into the fourth legislative session, and even some laws coming from the second. Lawmakers need to consider that this “will be a year of elections for the AL and the lawmakers will need to prepare themselves for the elections,” Ho said, adding that the election campaign might also interfere somehow in the work of the plenary.
But, most of all, Ho says, “[it] all depends on the amount of work solicited by the government and how many proposals they will present,” recalling that “we still have ten proposals [to discuss from the previous session].”
From those proposals, which have been delivered to the AL and are currently being addressed in several stages, the president elected the Regulation of Condominium Common Areas Management as well as the Non-mandatory Central Provident Fund Scheme as the two main priorities, as “they have a great impact in society [as they] involve a large number of people,” and “can’t be delayed anymore.”
The third priority will be the revision of the Electoral Law.
“This is also important otherwise there will be no elections next year,” Ho mentioned.
Although time is a concern, and there is admittedly a lot of work leftover from previous sessions to complete, the AL president considers the work in this third legislative session to be “better than in the first and second [legislative] sessions,” and that “the most important [thing] is not just the number of works that are completed but the quality of those works,” bearing in mind that “there are laws more complex than others.”
In this legislative year, the AL discussed and approved nine laws, as well as one resolution and 16 deliberations from the plenary – figures that pleased the president.
Ho also stated that this legislative year had a lot of important and complex issues passed through the AL, and that there are other concerning topics that he thinks need to be addressed during the coming year.
Ho was concerned with those companies that have a direct relationship to government expenditure, such as those in public works; namely the Pac On Ferry Terminal, the project for the revamp of the Grand Prix Museum and the new Patane library, among others.
The AL president highlighted that “there are topics that need to be clarified and that the government can come to the AL to do a presentation of the project without the requirement of [formal debate].” Regarding the case of the project of the Patane Library, he had already spoken to the government and will ask them to come to the AL to present the project to the legislators and to the population in general. Meanwhile, regarding the project of the Taipa Houses-Museum, he admitted: “I don’t exclude also that possibility.”
Asked to comment on the recent ideas proposed by some legislators and several other sectors of society that the works performed by the AL standing and follow-up committees should be more open, Ho said, “there are no secrets in the AL,” adding that what exists “is a [system] that regulates all the acts of the AL. This [system] states the public nature of the plenary works that includes the collection of images, sound, and sharing of all the documents including [those] on the website,” he said. The same document states “that the meetings of the committees are done behind closed doors,” but “if the legislators of that committee find it appropriate for the meeting to be open, they can vote in that way,” adding that it is an exclusive competence of the legislators in which the president cannot interfere.
Still, he added that he believes that “there is always space for improvement,” saying also, “the more open the [meetings] are, the less doubts that will exist,” and reaffirming that he will “speak to the presidents [of the different committees] to see if there is such a possibility in at least some of them [meetings].”
‘Government can think of changing the law to allow ride-hailing services’
Commenting on the current and future perspectives for ride-hailing services in the region, Ho Iat Seng reaffirmed the “legal issue,” explaining that what has been done on the mainland is “not yet a law but an opinion from the state council that regulates an experimental period.”
Regarding the possibility of the implementation of such a service in the territory, Ho said “if the population is favorable to that idea, the government can think of changing the law to allow that kind of service,” adding that the government should also “expedite the works related to the radio taxi and consider the possibility of using apps [to request the service],” he concluded.
Ho Iat Seng will not run for CE
The president of the Legislative Assembly (AL), Ho Iat Seng, affirmed that he would not be running for the position of MSAR Chief Executive (CE), the press was told during the meeting held last Friday at the AL, where he was carrying out an overall evaluation of the legislative year that just closed.
Ho noted that the question was “already raised many times over the last 10 years” and clarified: “I have no desire to be CE.”
“I have no profile for that. There are many [talented people] in Macau for that position,” he said, recalling: “at my age I don’t want to think about that possibility anymore.”
Questioned whether he has intentions of continuing to be the AL’s president, Ho said “I’m an indirectly elected legislator, so I don’t know if I’m going to be reelected. [It] depends on the support that I manage to gather or not,” he remarked,indicating that he does.
Ho is one of the names cited by the media and some legislators like Pereira Coutinho to be Chui Sai On’s successor, alongside Lionel Leong and Alexis Tam.
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