Rear Window | Stop making sense

Severo Portela

Once again the Legislative Assembly killed the trade union bill on the first reading…if we are allowed to borrow from an inspired spaghetti-western style book to address the ninth rejection of the proposal presented by the unrelenting labor lawmaker Pereira Coutinho. No doubt he will be at it again next year, but that is not the point – even though Coutinho will not be riding alone – if we are to believe the words of the Macau Workers Federation legislator Leong Sun Iok on the AL plenary meeting rejection: regrettable!

The point is these tiring and tedious tactics no longer do the job to prevent the MSAR having a trade union bill that would enshrine a right duly contemplated in the article 27 of the Basic Law. seventeen years in a row the MSAR has pretended that there are no objective (we presume) conditions to fulfill the Basic Law. It appears we are challenging the scope of the (in)famous Keynes evaluation on the long term – here, almost in keeping with every word of the full quote: “But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead”.

Actually, the trade union bill rifle rounds on the AL floor are now exposing the shortcomings of the political system, and, taking from the inability to answer to objective circumstances in society, it is a sign of the breeding of popular politics in the Legislative Assembly. When 10 out of 14 directly-elected legislators, plus two from the indirectly-elected sector of functional constituencies, vote for the trade union bill, to be defeated by 15 votes, of which only two are from the directly-elected  (or universal suffrage legitimized) plus the bulk of the functional legislators, and seven out of seven appointed lawmakers, we are dealing with a social and political divide. We are not considering the pair of abstaining votes since we cannot figure out the rationale for not taking a position on such a fundamental issue.

Anyway, among all the nay-sayers, only lawmaker and counsel Vong Hin Fai dared to justify his kill vote on the proposal, on grounds of “violation” of Macau’s ordinary legal procedures; nothing other than the need to forward the bill to the Committee for the Coordination of Social Affairs for consultation, and a more than vague one size fits all “consultation of Macau society”. At first reading we spot here not one but two Catch 22.

Veteran lawmaker Pereira Coutinho, himself the driving force behind labor legislation in the MSAR, chose white gloves to respond to Vong Hin Fai. Coutinho kept himself from challenging the Kafkian obligatory consultation of the CPCS, as an example of de facto erosion of the legislative initiative of the AL benchers, but cared to reply on the absence of “consultation of the Macau society” with reference to what happens with some of the bills coming from the government that completely lack any such consultation, and the government proposals the Legislative Assembly usually tables without much ado.

Pereira Coutinho, not only the veteran legislator but the seasoned and mature one, did forget to mention that despite no assessment of the above mentioned CPCS, Vong Hin Fai was able to affirm that he cannot see any traces of feasibility in the trade union law. Perhaps, Vong is trying to spare CPCS of undeserving matters.

Finally, one note to salute the decision to rebrand that anachronistic Latin Parade as International Parade, reflecting the zeitgeist and making peace with that strident nonsense disguising cultural resentment.