The Macau United Citizens Association (ACUM) candidacy group, the No.1 on the ballot paper for the 2025 direct legislative election, once again urges the government to set up an investment and development fund so as to share the returns generated by the fund’s operation with all local residents, a proposal listed as the first one of the eight major aspects laid out by the candidacy group’s political platform.
The ACUM group’s campaign platform for the direct election four years ago laid out a similar proposal.
In 2019, the government proposed the setting-up of a 60-billion-pataca investment and development fund with the aim of making better use of its large financial reserves, but it later dropped the proposal.
The group’s political platform for the 2025 direct election urges the government to relaunch its process to set up an investment and development fund and allocate 10 percent of the generated returns as dividends to be given to all local residents, with the aim of enabling local residents to benefit from the new opportunities created by the development of the city’s diversified industries.
The group’s political platform for the 2021 direct election called for the government to allocate 100 billion patacas from its financial reserves to the then proposed investment and development fund and give every permanent local resident initial shares worth 100,000 patacas in the fund so that they could earn dividends every year in line with its revenues.
The group is one of the six candidacy groups running in the ongoing direct election with polling day on September 14.
Incumbent legislator Si Ka Lon, who was the first-ranked candidate of the group, is now running in the 2025 indirect legislative election where he is a candidate of the sole list for the business sector. Consequently, the group has fielded sitting lawmakers Becky Song Pek Kei, 40, and Nick Lei Leong Wong, 39, who were the second and third-ranked candidates in the direct election four years ago, as its first and second-ranked candidates for the 2025 direct election.
The group has fielded Chan Lai Kei, 37, as its third-ranked candidate for the 2025 direct election. Chan is a candidate for the direct legislative election for the first time.
The group comprises 10 candidates for the direct legislative election this time.
The group is the electoral vehicle of the influential Alliance for Common People Building Up Macau (API), which is one of the city’s biggest community associations and is generally regarded as representing the city’s sizeable Fujianese community.
Song, Lei and Chan are API board members.
The group was the only electoral group winning three seats in the 2021 direct election when 14 candidacy groups vied for the 14 directly-elected seats at stake. Four years ago, candidates of seven of the 14 lists were elected, winning one, two or three seats respectively.
The group first ran in the legislature’s direct election in 2005, when prominent businessman Chan Meng Kam and property developer Ung Choi Kun were elected. Both were re-elected in 2009.
In the 2013 direct election, the group garnered the highest number of votes, enabling three of its candidates to be elected, namely Chan, Si and Song. Ung did not seek re-election in the 2013 election.
Chan did not seek re-election in the 2017 direct election, when the camp set up two candidacy groups, the group headed by Si and the Macau Citizens Development Association (ACDM) group headed by Song. At that time, both groups had one candidate elected each – Si and Song.
In the 2021 direct election, Si and Song returned to run in the same candidacy group, the ACUM group, once again winning three seats, which also enabled the then third-ranked candidate Nick Lei to join the legislature for the first time.
The group first fielded Song as a candidate for the 2009 direct election when she was the ninth-ranked candidate.
Nick Lei was first fielded as a candidate for the 2017 direct election when he was the fourth-ranked candidate of the Macau Citizens Development Association (ACDM) group.
As there are only six direct election candidacy groups this time, more than one group could be expected to win three seats.
In the second aspect laid out by its political platform for the direct election this time, the group calls for the government to require the city’s six gaming operators to increase the ratio of the local residents in relation to the total number of their respective employees, with the ultimate aim of ensuring that at least 85 percent of the employees hired by each of the six gaming operators are local residents.
In the third aspect, the group’s political platform urges the government to once again launch consumption subsidies in reference to the ones rolled out during the three-year COVID-19 pandemic, while also calling for the government to implement its wealth-sharing programme on a permanent basis.
In the fourth aspect, the candidacy group’s campaign platform, similar to four years ago, once again urges the government to set up a health insurance system for all local residents.
In the fifth aspect, the group’s platform urges the government to increase its annual subsidy for senior citizens to 15,000 patacas.
The government has increased the amount of the annual subsidy from 9,000 patacas to 10,000 patacas, effective from this year.
In the sixth aspect, the group’s platform calls for the government’s newly launched childcare allowance to cover children up to the age of six, a change from the current one benefitting children up to the age of three.
In the seventh aspect, the group’s platform calls for the government to propose amendments to the current law on its subsidised home-ownership scheme (HOS) allowing individuals to apply to buy an HOS flat with more than one bedroom, with the aim of enabling young local people to start a family.
In the eighth aspect, the political platform calls for improvements in the government’s pension system for lower-ranked retired public servants.
Becky Song Pek Kei (second from left), the first-ranked candidate of the Macau United Citizens Association (ACUM) candidacy group, speaks during a press conference on Sunday about the group’s political platform, as the second-ranked candidate Nick Lei Leong Wong (second from right), the third-ranked candidate Chan Lai Kei (left), as well as Chan Meng Kam (third from left), the candidacy group’s official representative, and Ung Choi Kun (third from right), the group’s consultant, look on. The press conference was held at the headquarters of the Alliance for Common People Building Up Macau in Iao Hon district. – Photo: Tony Wong
