Rear Window | Festival of ideas

Severo Portela

Trying to copy, rather borrow or emulate, from scenario-building methods in order to get a light reading on the immediate future in the Macau Special Administrative Region, we foresee an overload coming to the already overworked courts.  Extra-judicial traffic will be banked-up from two different sources of possible litigation: Legislative Assembly election guidelines and the invitation to craft ideas to solve the Pearl Horizon paradox.

In short, these are two examples of unwelcome (bad) creativity that contributes to blemishing the prestige and profile of the courts, adding up to a perception of erosion of the Macau legal system – probably undeserved. It’s nigh impossible to be extensive or comprehensive in discussions on these matters; actually this is just one column, merely attempting to address some areas of public interest.

Beginning with the (new) regulations framing this coming September elections of the Legislative Assembly…we would say that the particular guidelines regarding both the message and the messengers (media, candidates, associations, staff) may have only one virtuous consequence: courts may have the chance to pass a sentence(s) that forces the Electoral Affairs Commission to at least blush and regret its bill of wrong doings!

From the “faux pas” of the disqualification rules to the mandatory report on events, it looks like, apparently, as if, the Election Affairs Commission (CAEAL) went all out to demonstrate that all electoral/political propaganda is impossible, since in one way or another all information is biased and misleading. Some call this politics!

Given such a regulatory environment – a case study in lack of objective criteria – Jason Chao’s monitoring project comes at the right time to provide a channel for residents to give and take information and submit complaints related to the elections to be held this September. The former leader of pro-democracy New Macau Association is about to compile a record of complaints and monitor authorities such as the CAEAL, because he believes the “Project Just Macau” to be an alternative to the official channels with their “lack of transparency.”

The other source of the potential wave of litigation has its roots in the Polytex/Pearl Horizon ‘situation’… our choice of wording,  a euphemism that encompasses the right to repossess land according to the Land Law, as the government did, and the rights of apartment (presale) buyers in the Pearl Horizon development to that land no longer belonging to… Polytex.

The imbroglio is/was so evident that soon legislators, meaning the legislator Gabriel Tong, dared to propose that the only way out of the Pearl Horizon fiasco was in the form of an amendment of the Land Law. Tong found himself alone as soon as the unavoidable truth that the new land law was not to be touched hit the Legislative Assembly floor.

Later on, aware of the draft amendment to the Land Law, a majority of AL legislators – 19 – wrote to the Chief Executive claiming to have solutions to help square the circle, that is to say “ideas” to accommodate the unfortunate buyers’ alleged rights, thus providing social stability, without amending the law. Not much came out of that brain-storming session, but judging from the one solution already disclosed…the sky is limited by the imagination. Meanwhile the court rejected Polytex’s claims, arguing precisely that the Macau Government acted according to the Land Law.

Finally, we can only conclude that both the regulatory framework to the AL elections and the solutions based upon compliance with the law, general interests and something called acceptance of society to overcome the Land Law, may not only pose a challenge to the judicial independence and the rule of law, but definitely will divert the burden of such bad legislative choices to the courts.