Rear Window: New normal

Severo Portela

Who would anticipate that tourism itself might actually occupy the central stage in the run-up to the March meetings of the NPC and the CPPCC in the capital-city, Beijing? Nobody…unless the idea was to find something generally non-controversial, or non-assuming, in order to make the local agenda look less complicated and more manageable.
Actually, in this New Year of the Ram, tourism is much more than hospitality. Tourism is the signpost to economic diversification, gaming and non-gaming revenues, demographics, housing and transportation, labor policy, environment. And we can go further into the absurdity of tourism as the mot-clef…but there is another level of understanding, if we may dare to say it this way.
Quietly – as Chui Sai On does things – the Chief Executive scored again in the MSAR stock of refractive politics. The CE, let us recall, faced zero criticism regarding the alleged short-comings of his first team of Secretaries. Not surprisingly, the new-comers started their tenures trying to make a difference.
Given the political protocol designed by the Basic Law, the Five Secretaries, despite all the preparatory work undertaken to grow familiar with their portfolios, do not have the time to draft a detailed enough program. How do you overcome this void when you are feeling compelled to perform? You will be prone to conceive the broadest possible approach, in tourism, housing, transportation, gaming, and so on.
One way or another, the Five Secretaries had to comment on their respective portfolios. Based on this reasoning we can picture a statement, or another, on the pressing issue of housing and related issues, and then again it will be stated as broadly as possible as it will be necessary to state the need to cool the market. Then again, it is a broad approach, but because of that, Chui Sai On took it as a CE matter and cooled down the call for an immediate intervention in the real estate market.
The same thing seemed to have succeeded with the comprehensive handling of the hypothetical ceiling of 31 million a year of visitors and mainland tourists/shoppers: Secretary Tam spoke about it to later clarify its semantics. On his way to the opening ceremony of the third session of the 12th National People’s Congress, Chui Sai On gave orders for a study on tourism to be ready in the shortest time possible. Chui Sai On was on his way to meet senior officials of the China National Tourism Administration.
What should we take from these examples, among others? Chief Executive, Chui Sai On, won again, by means of the correct reading of the so-called Macau second system: each and every Secretary of the MSAR Government is supposed to be in micro-managing mode. The big policy questions, at macro-level level, or rather, the things the Central Government and the SAR Government decide deserve to be at that level, are out of bounds to the team of Secretaries.
Just consider an apparently finished matter, the Hengqin Project, to offer an example of a big question not yet ripe enough to bring down to micro-
management level. Meanwhile, at the Secretary (Leong Vai Tak) level is the human-scale project of regional cooperation between Macau and Zhongshan.
Once again, Chui Sai On has the one and only, and ultimate, word at government level. Speaking about the downfall of gambling revenues, Chui took the opportunity to consider the 48.6% drop in February to almost 20 billion patacas as the much likely new normal.
It looks like 2015 will be a very good year to warm Chui Sai On’s second term. We scrutinize the wording the CE chose to underline the commitment to work on a “moderate diversification” of the local economy without noticing that it tunes in with President Xi and his First Comprehensive: build a moderately prosperous society.