Rear Window | Driving woes

Severo Portela

Today we would like to lighten up your usual Legco and Courts column with a social affairs theme: cars, cars and cars. A little will be… with a moody musical score and lyrics written by ancient band The Cars: “Who’s gonna tell you when it’s late/Who’s gonna tell you things aren´t so great?”

According to the figures, despite the new roads and spaces the surge of economic development has brought to MSAR, the city still maintains a global record vehicle-to-kilometer ratio, and is always facing the threat of clogging, or worse, driving with no parking.

Long ago, Macau was constrained, coerced to strike a liberal balance between the right to buy and sell private cars, the right to drive safely, the right to create a sound environment and abide by international city health and safety standards.

However, we do have to bear in mind that to strike the liberal balance mentioned above, the government should supply a comprehensive transportation system like the Light Rail solution and then “invite” the population to demand more social mobility alternatives. People have a good understanding of what is at play when the Transportation Bureau (DSAT) announces it is willing to amend the Road Traffic Law.

DSAT “invites” people, citizens, society, if you prefer, to understand that the aim of the regulatory intervention is to address traffic offences to improve road safety. The people take such a noble idea as hefty penalties coming to burden the less affluent… besides the unbearable costs of parking, public or private.

In other words, instead of communicating directly to society, the DSAT is promoting social Darwinism of the survival of the fittest… meaning the fattest wallets!

Society is generally challenging the upcoming costs of driving, and DSAT is on the brink of a faux pas and had to backtrack from its own two-month public consultation period, which was to begin on June 28.  The reason for halting and abandoning a public consultation period will be recorded as clumsy politics: “As the public had already expressed a lot of views…” Just imagine.

Still in the category of automobiles, we have to notice that the same people, who were eager to challenge the DSAT, had allegedly intended to be off the Macau roads and less affluent drivers were indifferent to the proposed scheme of the limited 300 Macau license plate holders crossing the bridge across the Pearl River Delta. Perhaps sensing it is out of bounds as a Bay issue or because they know a thing or two about lucky draws.

Finally, something ironic related to that pointless strategy to address matters indirectly, obliquely, foggy, as we tried to show did not fool Macau’s poorest drivers at all. Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Raimundo do Rosário, had to face the queries from veteran pro-democracy legislator Ng Kuok Cheong. Ng challenged the mutual driving license recognition leading Rosario to a poignant intervention to contest Ng, whose aim was not obviously to be taken in a sovereignty sense. Ng meant traffic, economics, employment, autonomy indirectly; Rosário meant to argue directly for the obvious: it is about recognizing our own country’s driving license, our compatriots’ driving licenses. Undisputedly, Rosario had his day, though rare, on the right side of things.