New Macau Association protests ‘small circle’ show

Led by lawmaker Sulu Sou, democrat group New Macau Association held a protest yesterday against what it termed the “small circle” election for Chief Executive.

A small crowd had gathered by about 10 a.m. outside of the Escola Luso-Chinesa Técnico-Profissional, one of the polling stations in yesterday’s Electoral Committee election. The protesters held signs that read in English and Chinese messages such as, “The 400 electors do not represent me” and “No more small circle election”.

The protesters take issue with the few hundred nominated representatives who are able to determine the city’s next leader. They demand universal suffrage for all Macau citizens, describing it as “a fundamental right which is, not only given by the Basic Law, but also every Macau citizen is born with.”

The few thousand eligible voters do not represent the views of thousands of other associations in the special administrative region and tens of thousands of ordinary people, they said.

Some 300,000 voters have been excluded from the process to decide Macau’s next Chief Executive.

New Macau wrote in a statement that the process was “no more than a show orchestrated by the political elites in the small circle.”

“Pathetically, those in the small circle are enjoying their puppet role in the play while the majority of the citizens are not aware of how they are purportedly ‘represented’ by these puppets today.”

New Macau is calling for an overhaul of the entire system and said it would accept nothing less than universal suffrage.

“No reform of indirect elections, except for their abolishment, can address the problem of the exclusion of the majority of the population from the political process,” it wrote in its statement to the media. DB