20 politics
of cash subsidies to keep peo- Eilo Yu’s opinion, should be
ple quiet. Yu explains: “The reviewed with the objective of
government is actually using implementing a one person, one
resources to buy public political vote system.
actions and to stop people from “The basic law of Macau
taking to the streets, but this is does not talk about whether
not a long term strategy and it or not we should have univer-
will have to improve its institu- sal suffrage elections”, the po-
tions in order to allow public litical analyst says, proposing
participation in the regime.” a change: “We have to develop
A real and concrete blue- a policy in terms of universal
print for overall reform is re- suffrage elections in the fu-
quired and Eilo Yu adds that ture, and certainly this will not
if nothing is done, people happen in the short term,” In
will soon end up questioning Yu´s opinion, this is already a
the fairness of this system of matter of discussion in Macau
subsidies. – and a long one with no real
While it is fair to state that change in sight.
it is up to a government to pro- Yu acknowledges this may
mote change, it is not less rea- be the case but quick to argue:
sonable to add that civil society “In Hong Kong they have been
also has an important role to talking about it for more than
play in reshaping policies and 20 years! Here the government
in standing up for its rights. hasn’t even initiated any dis-
When it comes to Macau, cussion about political reform
the question is, is there a cul- so I think the public will, in the
ture of civic participation? Do next years, want to have this
people really want a system debate,” he says.
of direct suffrage in the terri- And would the existence of
tory? Eilo Yu admits that this political parties in Macau help
is still not the case: “The ordi- boost this debate? Eilo Yu says
nary people may not be quite political parties already ex-
interested, but a certain elite, ist, even if they don’t describe
more active in politics, will themselves as such. Still, there
talk about how our system can are some structural problems
be changed in order to improve sociations in the territory, considered to be within these groups.
the quality of governance.” representative of all sectors of society. “I think they are quite mature in
The 29 deputies of the legislative terms of organization but the problem is
Direct elections branch are elected through the Legisla- that many of their leaders are very old
tive Assembly Election Committee and and they may not be able to adapt to the
Neither the chief executive nor the candidates lists and their political plat- new political and social circumstances,”
Legislative Assembly are elected through forms are submitted to the Public Ad- says Yu. And, on this point, the professor
direct elections. The first is elected by a ministration and Civil Service Bureau. recalls the example of the neighbour ter-
300-member committee selected from as- A rather elaborate process that, in ritory, saying:
april 2009
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