Rear Window | Boldly inaccurate

Severo Portela

Despite a sort of social commotion rooted in a long-time bonding with Bobo, one would have said that the Flora Garden’s oldest (?) inmate passing away was to be taken and handled as nothing more than a news service closing feature, or perhaps a tip-off into further hard and harsh investigative reporting.

Nonetheless, Bobo’s quiet departure meant his fate was to become a footnote of the leitmotiv of mistrust in the Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM) – at the time, the Leal Senado of Macau. Bear Bobo’s plaque at the premises displays a bold error: the rescue from a restaurant situated in Rua da Felicidade area was said to be in the year 1984, when it was indeed 1986.

The factual error would go unnoticed perhaps if it were not for the fact that some of news media and journalists who were committed and endeavored to save the caged bear all those years ago are still around. MDT clearly explains that Va Kio Daily dates the bear’s rescue to December 19th, 1986 after the municipal authority caved in to the pressure led by Sousa, the first TDM anchor, and the Chinese language newspaper Va Kio.

As a disclaimer, we would like to say that we are taking this episode – an apparent late blooming silly season – as a warning against the rewriting of the past. It may be an excessive step because we are to believe, we want to believe, that the correction of the date Bobo moved to a quarantine enclosure in the Flora Garden was a clumsy mistake, usually attributed to an absent-minded civil servant.

However, in such times that fake news revels everywhere from the roots of Trumpism, we have to consider that this is far and above driven by fake news: This is fake facts to feed fake myths to fake history. It is not difficult to understand that fake news is bad and fake history is worse…to allow bad people (sorry for the simplification) to rewrite the past to suit their concealed ends.

As we said, we have nothing to support anything fishier than mere sloppiness or lack of concern, but conventional wisdom tells us that these are the fields in which apathy grows; especially in an enclave where there have been bad examples of ignoring or discarding facts, that is to say suppressing facts, doctoring or spinning…but faking is of another realm.

Just take into consideration what MDT found regarding the consequences of this dating negligence: these reports also indicate that Bobo´s age may be less than 35 years old when he died as reported by Municipal Affairs Bureau! If that is true, we could speculate on possible motives to change 86 to 84, but that is not the point, although entertaining. Bobo is gone: long live Bobo.

Back to MSAR’s reality or facts. We should highlight the figures that make for budgetary prosperity sourced from its crop culture: the government is expecting the revenue from the gaming sector to grow by MOP122 billion: a Chief Executive dream!

Can this MOP122 billion weight greatly expand the MSAR government’s social policy, and finance what investments are proven to be needed, as well as a sound increase in the salary index of Macau public servants?

One final note about the so-called committee for the Coordination of Social Affairs, and the stance that the employees’ representatives take on things! The representatives happen to condemn and reject a simple regular government proposal to amend the Labor Law to allow holiday shifts between mandatory public holidays…accusing the government of insisting upon a proposal that goes against the public opinion. That is all about labor…believe it or not!