Rear Window | New Macau looking for a third-wave

Severo Portela

Suddenly…in the run-up to the 2017 Legislative Assembly elections, Scott Chiang abandoned the top job at the New Macau Association (ANM), leaving local pro-democracy in the odd situation of needing to adopt a comprehensive strategy and cook their electoral list due shortly. Or rather, Chiang’s resignation facilitated a redesign of the democrats’ strategy to help retain an ANM ticket in the Legislative Assembly.

If circumstances had been different – and circumstances here are seen as a ‘tougher political environment’ clouding Special Administrative Regions across the Pearl River Delta – the second-wave New Macau Association would likely sail solo to the elections, discarding seasoned first-wave pro-democracy legislators Ng Kwok Cheong and Au Kam San.

Given the actual environment in the Macau Special Administrative Region, civil activists under the ANM umbrella had to look for a new wave to overcome their dire straits and surf to political relevance. The now former president of the local democrats is living in an inconvenient limbo under investigation, albeit never formally charged or prosecuted as is the situation for other activists of the association. Jason Chao has been through his share of investigations. He left ANM to set up a very much needed election monitoring body, and he is keeping his options open for an eventual comeback.

Scott Chiang is stepping out of the leadership position to build commitment; a solution to keep the ANM flag alive in the one and only full-time political forum in the MSAR. The mixed solution could be woven together by putting as a front-runner veteran lawmaker Ng Kwok Cheong with a junior partner chosen from among those in the ANM leadership not under investigation. Ng has proven to be at ease and comfortable to be the liberal in the legislative picture; a well-trusted senator, he can carry aboard a second candidate to sail ANM third-wave to the legislature. Au Kam San has long been a disfranchised democrat, allegedly unhappy with pro-democracy’s core values and horizons. If so, he would be happy to run as non-liberal stock.

In an allegoric manner, we would say that what ANM has to decide is if the third-wave to the Legislative Assembly is a transversal one (in which particles of the medium move in a direction perpendicular to the direction of the wave), a longitudinal (moving parallel to the direction of the wave) or a surface wave…going round in circles.

Anyway, it is of utmost importance that the pro-democracy front retains representation in the Legislative Assembly, for all those reasons that come to mind including the one to spare residents of the discomfort of seeing non-democrats performing that role in the AL spectrum… reality is already harsh enough.

Finally, some closing notes to the Electoral Affairs Commission, better known for its Portuguese acronym CAEAL and for its apparent morbid wish to disrupt a very simple regulation like the electoral law: not exactly a difficult task since the material to be handled is partial, incomplete and biased.

Resisting the temptation to descend into a self-rewarding I told you so, we do have to warn against the temptation – pardon us, we do repeat ourselves – to open the Pandora’s Box of the interpretation of the will of the legislator. Though, we do ask, which one: the Chinese, Portuguese or the English draft? We do not have to worry since the magic solution is already in the pipeline: a new commission to address disparities in the Chinese, Portuguese and English drafts of the MSAR workload of legislation.