Rear Window | Bang on a can

Severo Portela

It looks like this Year of the Rooster will be a noisy one in Macau! But do not let yourself be mystified by transformative things that are usually associated with noise elsewhere…MSAR nurtures a very composed kind of ado, seldom beyond a scuffle. No color umbrellas are to be seen in the open.

Noise here is the channel to voice complaints, opposition, disregard or unhappiness with the operation of a system that does not give sufficient voice to grassroots inputs or the opinions of the average resident. The Basic Law provides the mechanisms to let off some steam, but for the convenience of the dominant class rather than from fear of imaginary localist winds.  The dominant class seem to do better in swampy dead calm waters.

Actually, the more the Macau oligarchy insists on the same antics, the more people will feel disenfranchised and will soon tire of the actual operation of the system rather than challenge the system itself. In short… we could take the digression above to introduce a good noisy example of people getting fed up with an oligarchy lacking in social sensitivity: the Go-slow protest!

The revised fees of everything related to the Transport Bureau are an outrage to the average driver rolling and parking around, and not only to the scooter crowd. Apparently… somebody thought it was a good idea to ease the way into the hearts of the little people riding scooters in the form of a lai si to replace their motorcycles for greener ones. But this is another story sending damage control smoke signals.

The point is Pereira Coutinho, who led a demonstration of 5,000 in early January, is no longer just protesting against a hike he says is motivated by “colluding interests between the government and the businessmen, since after the regulations went into force (January 1), the prices of the parking fees and rentals rose”; he wants more, he wants the head of Secretary for Transportation Raimundo Rosário, whom he accuses of not giving any sound explanation for the fee increase.

OK. Rosário kept his head but authorities had to, or managed to, defuse the Go-slow action by simply proposing an alternative method which protesters could not accept as an equivalent adjustment.

Truly, this is not the first time legislator and leader of the Macau Civil Servants Association felt free from the strict constraints emanating from the MSAR executive-led model, and openly asked for the resignation of a policy Secretary. Sonia Chan, who assumedly asked ex-Prosecutor General Ho Chio Meng to facilitate a job for somebody, refused plainly to answer Coutinho’s questions. No wonder the lawmaker asked for her resignation!

And the Year of the Rooster is just taking its first steps. More is to come… if the system keeps on dismissing any contribution of civil society merely to be checked at the Legislative Assembly, the erosion will go on and on, sometimes a tragedy, sometimes a comedy.

It is no use to pretend all problems in society proceed from a lack of public consultation or that any situation can be addressed by furthering or improving public consultation mechanisms, or by even going deeper to demand adequate consultation and representation mechanisms. It is of no use to reinvent the wheel… the ultimate consultation mechanism has long been invented: democracy.

A final note to another Deep Blue kind of nightmare, this one related to a casino game. According to The Economist, an artificial-intelligence machine won against 4 of the world’s best Poker players. The machine, it goes by the name of LIBRATUS, collected almost 2 million in prize-money.  “Libratus achievement is another big step forward for AI: Poker is a game of imperfect information, and it had to work out when its opponents were bluffing”.