Training Younger Political Talents for Macau
The current discussions on Macau’s electoral reform appear to focus on the technical changes surrounding the election arrangements—a positive phenomenon which however perhaps neglects a crucial matter of how the local Macau people can be encouraged to participate in political and social affairs. The recent appeals made by some mainland officials to Macau to rejuvenate the patriotic elite have not been adequately addressed by a series of electoral reforms formulated by the Macau government. Nor do the community groups advocate any fresh ideas of how to train and groom more Macau people to govern Macau in the long run. Arguably, as more East Asian societies are undergoing the inevitable problem of aging, Macau will sooner or later have to address the critical issue of how to accelerate the training of young political talents.
Traditionally, there were several channels through which young political talents were groomed and trained in Macau. During the Portuguese rule, Macau’s young political talents were trained mostly by the Portuguese groups, the local Chinese interest groups, notably the neighbourhood associations, the pro-Beijing business chambers, the patriotic Federation of Trade Unions as well as the women associations. The joint rule by both the Portuguese elite and the local Chinese community leaders in Macau before the transer of administrative right in December 1999 also provided a golden opportunity for the local political talents to learn and practise politics. It can be argued that Macau before the handover was much well-prepared than Hong Kong in terms of training the local people to govern the special administrative region. Mr. Edmund Ho, for instance, had long served the community and the legislature prior to his election as the first chief executive of the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR). The other channels through which the local people were politically cultivated included the former Leal Senado and the Taipa Island and Coloane’s municipal council. Adding to the two councils were the legislative chamber, the traditionally active civil service unions, the young but active pro-democracy groups as well as some religious groups that were concerned about the livelihood issues in Macau.
After Macau’s return to China, a crucial channel of training political talents was abolished, namely the two municipal councils. Regardless of the arguments for or against the abolition of the two councils, the most prominent impact was to deprive the local elite of a very useful channel of political participation and discourse.
Another area that may have been neglected by Macau observers is that the local religious groups appear to be stagnant in terms of new memberships. A few critics of the Macau religious groups have argued that the Catholic Church, for instance, has failed to sufficiently encourage, mobilize and attract far more young people to believe in God than the pre-1999 era and to participate in social, not to mention political, affairs. It can be recalled that some pro-democracy activists in Macau were the outcome of their active participation in religious activities throughout the 1980s. Some of them are still the activists in Macau’s political arena, but their position would not be easily replaced by any visible youngsters in the near future. Part of the problem is that most young people in Macau appear to see politics and political participation as unworthy, preferring to invest their time and energies in other areas and materialistic pursuits. Compounding the problem of youth apathy and materialism is that the Macau middle class appears to lack sufficient interest in establishing new media channels that can engage the young people to discuss social and political affairs. Some blogs do exist in Macau and they provide a channel for the young people to engage in social discussions, but they are a rarity that cannot really stimulate the growth of political talents to prepare the continuously challenging task of “Macau people ruling Macau” in the long run.
If this analysis is accurate, how can the government and people of Macau stimulate more young people to participate in socio-political affairs? The Edmund Ho administration has decided to set up district-based consultative committees that can perhaps involve more young people to participate in social and political discussions. This is a good sign, but its results remain to be observed. Arguably, the society and the government of Macau have the responsibilities of creating more channels of elite and mass participation.
First and institutionally, if the district-based consultative committees can inject some directly elected elements, or members indirectly elected by the local neighbourhood associations and residents’ housing committees, they would be able to provide useful channels of citizen participation and breeding grounds for political talents. A few democrats have proposed the idea of directly electing members of the district-based consultative committees. This idea is innovative and progressive. Yet, the senior officials of the Department of Civil Affairs appear to experience frequent rotations, meaning that once they are familiar with the work of interacting with citizens at the grassroots level and on a daily basis, some of them will be promoted to higher positions. This relative instability of the leadership of the Department of Civil Affairs might have affected any of its possible plan of stimulating citizen participation and training local political talents. Of course, it can be argued that not all senior officials of the Department of Civil Affairs are sent to take over other higher portfolios; many of them are still working in the same agency. This is true, but it remains to be seen how the Department initiates more innovative ideas of fostering citizen participation and grooming political talents at the local level.
It can also be contended that if the district-based consultative committees can introduce directly elected members, they would be reverted back to the shadow of the late municipal councils, which actually had trained a considerable number of political elites in Macau before their abolition. Some of these elites trained by the two municipal councils are still active in the current SAR political arena.
Second, even if the number of legislators will not be expanded significantly in the next five to ten years, the idea of appointing political assistants, who will help each elected and appointed Legislative Councillor, can be considered boldly. Such political assistants can be part-time helpers who will follow their legislative mentors, learn from the skills of drafting documents and speeches, study the legislative procedures by participating in some committee discussions, and will perhaps replace some of their retiring mentors in future direct and indirect elections.
In Hong Kong, the debate over the citizenship of a few newly created undersecretaries under the Principal Officials Accountability System has pointed to the crucial issue of expanding political appointees without sufficient accountability to the public. But the Hong Kong debate has neglected a possible way of training political talents through the appointment of assistants or ad hoc members to help each elected legislators. It is curious to see that, while the Hong Kong District Councils have many ad hoc members helping the elected councillors, the Legislative Councillors themselves do not have sufficient research and assistant support. Although the Hong Kong legislators have their own office with some paid assistants, these assistants cannot participate in legislative meetings and debate, unlike the District Councils’ ad hoc members who can participate in council meetings and discussions with limited voting rights.
In Macau where secretaries are appointed by the Chief Executive without a lower tier of “undersecretaries” parallel to the Hong Kong case, the creation of political assistants or ad hoc members who work for legislators can be considered seriously. This experiment, if implemented in Macau, will generate far more political talents than even the existing Hong Kong POAS model, which is criticized accurately by many critics as a patron-clientelist system not only rewarding friends and supporters of a particular patron but also paying these appointees comparatively much higher than the elected legislators. Macau, however, can avoid this political pitfall. Most of the existing interest groups that have traditionally trained local political talents are working hard on various social, economic and political issues. Nor does the legislative chamber in Macau exhibit a serious political and ideological cleavage as with the Hong Kong legislature. Hence, injecting more political appointees made by the Macau legislators themselves would perhaps be a feasible option of training more politicians in the future. Indeed, the number of such Legislative Councillors’ assistants or ad hoc members in Macau would have to be discussed.
In the Hong Kong District Councils, each council has its ad hoc members appointed by elected councillors and approved in general meetings. Some Councils restrict the number of ad hoc members by less than half of the elected councillors; and some also limit their voting rights. If we transplant this local-level Hong Kong model to Macau, the Macau legislators would have to discuss ad hoc members’ number, duties, rights, responsibilities and also voting powers.
Third, the existing groups which train local Macau activists will have to reform their youth sections so that more young people will be encouraged to participate in social and community affairs. The Macau New Youth Association has become very active since the early 2000s. It appears to be a potential vehicle of nominating young candidates to participate in the forthcoming legislative elections in September 2009, thus constituting a potential rival to the increasingly aging pro-democracy activists. On the other hand, the pro-democracy camp in Macau is training young people on a selective basis. One cannot expect too much from the pro-democracy camp, which is in lack of manpower and financial resources to groom any young political talents. Furthermore, it remains to be seen whether the existing religious groups will strengthen all their youth branches in a more effective way. With regard to the pro-Beijing neighbourhood associations and women federation, their activities have become increasingly prominent perhaps due to the urgent need of preparing for the 2009 elections.
Third, the increasingly affluent Macau middle class should perhaps consider the idea of opening new media channels so as to stimulate more young people to participate in social and political affairs. In Hong Kong, the strong middle class innovatively utilizes blogs, websites and web radio programs to engage the public in political and social discourse. The Macau middle class, however, appears to be largely politically uninterested in investing more time, efforts and
resources in community involvement. This weakness remains to be tackled with the passage of time, especially when the middle class is growing stronger. It can be easily observed that new English media have emerged in Macau since the 2000s. They have been mainly orchestrated by the local Portuguese whose political and social consciousness appears to be stronger than many local Chinese middle-class members. From a critical perspective, the Chinese middle-class members require a deeper sense of social consciousness and political belonging so that at least a few of them will be willing to fund alternative media channels and take the lead in training more local political talents. Otherwise, the development of social and political talents will remain the task of the traditionally active interest groups and the relatively unreformed legislature. Understandably, most members of the Macau middle class are pragmatic and avoid political participation. At most, they silently vote legislative in elections. Regardless of their political orientations, the local Chinese middle class should critically review their relatively opportunistic and materialistic stance. If some of them are eager to witness a better society with more quality politicians and youths to govern Macau whose future will affect their offsprings, they should invest more time in political participation and more financial resources in opening new media channels that will improve the level of socio-political discourse.
In a nutshell, the local Chinese middle class should arguably shoulder more responsibilities of educating the public politically and mobilizing the youth socially.
It must be noted that Macau after its return to China has envisaged more local casino groups which constantly hold social gatherings with their employees and which have their bosses directly elected to the legislature. At least one of these local groups having connections with casino capitalists formed a legislator’s office in the northern district, trying to cultivate closer relationships with the constituents and voters. These local groups are active in offering constituency services and grooming some political assistants knowledgeable in the organization and mobilization of voters. They will likely turn into a powerful electoral machinery once the campaign period of the 2009 legislative elections begins. Even before the 2009 elections, their constituency services and social gathering are cementing the ties between the local casino capitalists and the voters. The unintended consequence of electoral competition among the local casino capitalists and their related social groups as well as clan associations is to stimulate the growth of a few district-based political activists. However, the foreign casino groups refrain from organizing any constituency services, for doing so would constitute foreign participation and intervention in local politics. Furthermore, they offer generous employees’ fringe benefits that do not necessitate the organization of intensive social gatherings as with some other local casino capitalists and their clientelist and clan groups.
Since Macau does not have regular political parties functioning like its neighbour Hong Kong, where mini-political parties are working more as elite-led machines than as the mass-based parties of Western democracies, political “parties” are only formed in Macau shortly before the regular legislative elections. Although a few political parties do persist in the form of socio-political concern groups in non-election time, they do not really provide a very attractive channel of citizen participation. The lack of financial resources and organizing personnel saps their ability to groom local political talents, especially the pro-democracy forces. The underdevelopment of political parties in Macau means that they cannot easily groom political talents.
In short, Macau’s political arena is in need of more young blood so that its principle of “Macau people ruling Macau” will be solidly entrenched in the future.
Macau has tremendous institutional, environmental and cultural constraints on the development of local political talents.
To the majority of the local Chinese, politics remains to be relatively distant, if not necessarily negative and “dirty.”
Both the government and the society, including the legislators, religious groups and the middle-class members, will have to confront the challenge of considering new, innovative but feasible alternatives of training and grooming the political talents for Macau in the coming decade. If they succeed in meeting the new challenges, the prospects of “Macau people ruling Macau” will remain cautiously optimistic. If not, Macau will likely envisage a dearth of political talents whose impact will inevitably impinge on the quality of governance.
Sonny Lo is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.