Rear Window | Soft targets

Severo Portela

Democrats gathered under the current leadership of the New Macau Association (better known by its Portuguese acronym ANM) really do look like they have digested the lessons learned from the civic referendum defeat and from other (relative) failures in their ongoing fight on core political issues, and not so core or political ones. The democrats have had to live in a hostile political environment of a general reticence to debate anything that may threaten the system… even though it may be the untouchable Basic Law or even something trivial, not to say stupid.
Coming of age in an arrogant sort of authoritarian political climate and having to face an intransigent system by the day, Scott Chiang, Jason Chao and others decided to shelve their hard political agenda to concentrate their fire on soft targets. That it is why it looks like the New Macau Association is on the hunt for Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, Alexis Tam.
Secretary Tam, long a Chui Sai On right-
hand-man, has been credited to be the Chief Executive’s go-to-man for defusing crises, regardless of profile, no matter from where they may originate… whoever is involved or framed. But in doing so, Alexis has been presenting himself as an easy target: if you target him you hit Chui Sai On.
Tam’s handling of the Estoril Hotel brief – Scott Chiang takes it as the “farce of the whole renovation project” – has been an entertaining production, to say the least. Everybody looked so absorbed and amused playing the crowd-pleasing sound-byte game that they did not notice the PR disaster on the horizon. We have to bear in mind that Scott Chiang was arrested by the police following the hoisting of a black banner that called Secretary Tam the “heritage killer”. He was released after a night in detention without being charged… and that´s all he could say. Not very reassuring when winds blowing from the Pearl River Delta tell of civil disobedience kept, and kept under investigation.
At the same time, the case of the Hong Kong film crew who shot the inside of the Estoril unauthorized was good as done. Perhaps Scott Chiang has been taken as the author of a felony and the Hong Kong  crew guilty of cultural activism?! The distinction Hannah Arendt made between an open violation of the law performed in public, and a clandestine one is “so glaringly obvious that it can be neglected only by prejudice or ill will”.
The president of the New Macau Association was not shy to label Secretary Tam as an “ignorant and arrogant official” and voiced the obvious conclusion of his argument: he is not suitable to be in charge of preserving Macau Heritage.
While Chiang was not shy to highlight Tam’s inadequacy to the job, he was timid, indeed, one has to read strategically wise, to add that Alexis Tam has to go! Chui Sai On came slightly in help of his Secretary but rather tepidly.
Finally, just to gather one more example of the New Macau Association soft target antics, take the example of the announced launch of an alternate unofficial naming competition for the Panda cubs. The Democrats say the government-sponsored competition is “non-transparent” in its decision making process. Whether this is frivolous material or not, the Democrats believe that without fairness there is no reason to reduce the animosity.