TUI refuses to rule on unnoficial referendum case

The Court of Final Appeal (TUI) has decided that it does not have the jurisdiction to rule on the appeal filed by the Open Macau Society regarding the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM)’s decision not to allow the group to occupy a public space for the promotion of the unofficial referendum. Reacting to the decision, Open Macau Society president Jason Chao claimed that TUI’s decision has confirmed that the unofficial referendum was not illegal, as the government has always claimed.
In the ruling, the judges state that the civil referendum aims only at understanding and seeking residents’ opinions regarding the changes to the current electoral system and to eventually elect the Chief Executive by universal suffrage.
Therefore, the intention and the actual effect of the referendum was merely serving as an opinion poll, which the judges said was also acknowledged by the appellant.
“Considering the true nature of the ‘civil referendum,’ we think that the relevant promotional activities should not be considered as an ‘assembly’ from a legal-technical perspective,” the judges wrote, stressing that TUI has no ground to intervene in the case.
“In fact, we cannot see, from the file, that these activities are organized for the exchange of perspective, discussion or formation of collective opinions, or the expression and discussion of opinions. [Their] goal is merely to attract people to take part in the opinion survey that is related to the CE election.”
Furthermore, the TUI judges deliberated that the activities were not demonstrations which are usually carried out through marching or rallying, with the objective of expressing participants’ opinions or feelings.
“Therefore, our conclusion is that TUI does not have the jurisdiction to rule on the question raised by the appellant,” the verdict states.
Meanwhile, Jason Chao told the Times that TUI does not consider the civil referendum illegal and only views it as an opinion survey.
“As a result, the government’s claim that the referendum is illegal is baseless”, he said.
Moreover, he claimed that a good aspect of the verdict was that it meant that the authorities cannot arrest them or intervene into their promoting the civil referendum on the streets.
“Nevertheless, what is bad about [the verdict] is that we cannot occupy the public space and set up booths, because [the judges] did not consider our action as holding assembly”, Jason Chao said.
He added that they have no intention in “playing word games” with the government and changing the description of their activities so that it will comply with the description of an assembly.
As for the comment made by the Legal Affairs Bureau director Cheong Weng Chon regarding the potential legal problem of releasing the poll result, Jason Chao revealed that it was he who first wrote to the bureau to ask about the issue.
He revealed that the civil referendum organizers are considering releasing the result in the early morning of September 2.