Rear Window | The art of the superfluous

Severo Portela

In order to balance the above mentioned decorative (superfluous) proposition as we have selected to title today’s column, we dare to turn to no-frills material… presented in the pulp fiction (rapid fire) style. We have good news and bad news… which one comes first?
Good news… it will be. The Secretary for Administration and Justice anticipates submitting the bill to amend the Legislative Assembly (AL) Electoral Law just before AL’s two months’ recess beginning 16th of August. There will be at least two months to think it over.
The not so good news (and pardon me for abruptly introducing a third option that we would rather name ugly news) is that Sonia Chan assumes that the draft is to comprise the constructive suggestions collected in the course of the 30-day public consultation.
And why one should qualify a popular survey as “not so good,” indeed ugly news, since we are talking about public participation, elections, well, democracy? Because we have reasons to believe that any suggestion to increase the number of directly-elected legislators, or any other democracy enhancing idea, any step forward, would not only be discarded but would also have zero influence in this process. Bear in mind that we consider the ones abiding by the limits of the constitutional framework (Basic Law) as mere suggestions.
Noblesse oblige, we have to underline that Secretary for Administration and Justice is not one to embarrass herself while spinning things to make a good photo op. Sonia Chan acknowledges candidly that “improving the electoral culture and enhancing the electoral quality are also ways to enhance democracy in Macau.” This is bad news.
We take this as a position for show that feeds on the superfluous, qualitative, worse, untimely, secondary aspects of democracy building, while taking democracy to a quantitative standstill or inertia. Bear in mind that the suggestions from the public consultation to be considered have “to benefit the development of the city” and “help it to adapt to the current situation (of the city)”.
That is why the improvements introduced in the Electoral Law concern mainly the definition and clarification of promotional activities and matters concerning electoral campaigning, supervision of electoral activities, supervision of campaigning expenses and the updating rules for candidacies. The distance between superfluous and spooky can be one of sense and sensibility, whether we take regulations as an imposition on campaign advertising in newspapers, e-papers or websites, and other issues, or we take it as a set of behavioral standards to be enforced!
Finally, we care to frame one more category of news: the not so good news, not so bad news. The Secretary for Administration and Justice said it is not urgent to revise the regulations related to the so-called indirect or functional constituency elections. Is it good or is it bad?
One worthy note is the way the Government Information Bureau defused the Taishan Nuclear Plant brief as a potential source of social commotion and disturbance. Instead accepting that the matter will go away and if not we’ll handle the troublemakers, Macau immediately communicated with Guangdong, addressed all aspects of the problem, and invited nuclear experts from the mainland to suggest any updates, should they be required, to MSAR´s contingency plan for dealing with nuclear incidents.