Policy Address | Administration and Justice – Sonia Chan: Only Beijing’s interpretation of Basic Law is acceptable

Sonia Chan (center)

The election of members to the future municipal body with no political power is an impossibility “due to impositions of the Basic Law,” Secretary for Administration and Justice Sonia Chan said yesterday at the Legislative Assembly.

Replying to criticism from lawmaker Sulu Sou, who argues that the Basic Law does not disqualify the option of elections, Sonia Chan said:  “That’s your interpretation of the Basic Law and we have many different interpretations of the Basic Law in Macau, but… on that matter we are in the hands of National People’s Congress.”

With her reply, Chan tried to halt the insistent questions on the matter coming from several lawmakers.

With reference to Sou, Chan said that the lawmaker was trying to mold the spirit of the law to his own will. “It’s necessary to read all of article 95 [of the Macau Basic Law] and not only a part of it,” she said.

During a heated debate on the matter of municipal elections, Sou displayed a big volume of papers in his hand claiming to be thousands of opinions that corroborate his interpretation.

The Secretary replied: “Things aren’t that simple as Sou says; we need to have a broader notion and we must make an interpretation of the full rule. These [municipal] bodies cannot be on the first level of governance and in Macau we have a government of one level only.”

Sulu Sou

“I disagree. In what sense have these changes become adverse?” Sou queried. “Regarding the municipal bodies, nobody has ever asked to create a local assembly [constituting] a second level [of governance]. Very far from that.”

Another of the topics raised by Sou, and later supported by Au Kam San, concerned the lack of evolution of the Macau political system, a topic that has been addressed by several times already in the previous legislature, namely by Au, Ng Kuok Cheong and Pereira Coutinho, and that led to the walkout of Ng during last year’s policy address presentation.

Chan, as she had already mentioned on the first day of the presentation of the Policy Address for Administration and Justice, replied: “Back in 2012 we [took] a step towards the democratization of the political system. Frequent changes in the political system aren’t favorable to the economic development [of Macau],” adding, “that is why I said yesterday that we need to consolidate the results [from that change] first.”

“We continue with the same rhetoric speech,” retorted Au. “The economy wasn’t affected in any way back in 2012, why should it be now? This argument has no grounds. You keep focusing on small things [secondary matters]. You talk about all-things ‘one-stop’, but in this case we are in a ‘full-stop’ situation.”

According to Au, the Secretary needs only to set a real schedule for the topics and put the services under her authority to work together to find answers.

“To come here with this repetitive speech has no [purpose] at all,” he concluded.

Chan said she disagrees with the idea that the government is not “evolving” the political system and notes as an example of such evolution “the changes [recently introduced] to the Electoral Law,” adding, “if Au doesn’t agree we are evolving in the procedures, that’s your interpretation then.”

Arbitration to receive a boost by rental contracts

QUESTIONED BY lawmaker Chui Sai Cheong on the topic of the Arbitration and Conciliation and about the possibility of extending such works to a “broader horizon” i.e. to the Portuguese-speaking countries, Secretary Sonia Chan said, “we have already started to hear and we are preparing to listen the operators [in this field]. More than the regime itself, [what is] important is the disclosure of information as until now the number of cases [that reach arbitration] is very few. We must seek [to examine the] effects [of the arbitration system] in order to promote it to the operators. We can introduce this [as a mandatory] clause on the rental contracts, in order to make use of this regime,” she said.