The local government announced yesterday that the election for Macau’s sixth-term chief executive (CE) has been slated for October 13, with a spending limit of over 6.4 million patacas set for each CE candidate’s campaign.
Dated and signed by Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng on August 8, the Executive Order No. 40/2024 of the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR) published in the Official Gazette (BO) yesterday set October 13, 2024 as the date for the chief executive election.
As cited by the executive order, in accordance with Annex I to the Basic Law of the Macau SAR and the amended Chief Executive Election Law, the chief executive must be a Chinese permanent Macau resident, who has reached the age of 40 and ordinarily resided in Macau for a continuous period of no less than 20 years, upholding the Basic Law and pledging allegiance to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its Macau SAR. The chief executive is elected by the 400-member Chief Executive Election Committee before his or her appointment by the Central People’s Government for a term of five years. Each chief executive can only be re-elected once for a second consecutive five-year term.
The 400-member committee comprises 120 electors from the industrial, commercial and financial sectors, 115 from the cultural, education, professional and the sports sectors, 115 from the labour, social services and religious – Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist and Taoist – sectors, and 50 electors from Macau’s 12 deputies to the National People’s Congress (NPC) as well as representatives of the Macau members of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the Macau Legislative Assembly (AL) and the city’s municipal organs.
The elections of the two former chief executives – Edmund Ho Hau Wah (1999-2009) and Fernando Chui Sai On (2009-2019) – for their respective second terms were both held at the end of August.
Macau’s fifth-term Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng will serve out his first five-year term at midnight on December 19 this year.
On April 18, 2019, Ho Iat Seng announced his candidacy for the 2019 Chief Executive Election of the Macau SAR, and on July 22 that year, he became the only candidate who had secured sufficient nominations from the Chief Executive Election Committee.
Ho has not yet disclosed whether or not he will stand for re-election as chief executive. He told the media in May that he had not yet decided whether to run for a second term at that time, adding that he would make an announcement after making a decision on the matter.
In line with the Chief Executive Election Law, any person who intends to stand for the election of the chief executive – or his or her representative who must be a permanent Macau resident and has registered as a voter – shall obtain from and submit to the sixth-term Chief Executive Electoral Affairs Commission (CAECE) a nomination form for candidature in the chief executive election, endorsed by no less than 66 Chief Executive Election Committee members, or 16.5 percent of the committee’s members. The nomination period shall run for at least 12 days and the deadline for submission of candidacy nominations shall be 30 days prior to the date of the chief executive election.
Each CE candidate and his or her representative or campaign organisation is free to carry out electioneering activities between 14 days before and one day prior to the CE election date, i.e., this time between September 28 and October 11, including publishing election platforms and giving interviews to the media; sending free publicity materials by post; meeting CE election committee members; organising CE election committee members’ rallies; and making speeches and answering questions.
By law, all elections in Macau shall take place on a Sunday. Moreover, electioneering is banned on the eve of polling day, i.e., Saturday, known as “reflection day”.
The local government has set the campaign expenditure limit as 6,439,847.85 patacas for each 2024 Chief Executive Election candidate, according to the Executive Order No. 128/2024 dated and signed by Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng on August 8 and published in the Official Gazette (BO) yesterday.
Apart from the CE election in 1999, when there were two candidates – Edmund Ho and Stanley Au Chong Kit – vying for Macau’s top post, all the other CE elections (2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019) only involved one candidate each time.
This photo provided by the Macau Government Information Bureau (GCS) shows Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng delivering a speech at a reception held by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Macau Garrison to mark the 97th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army on August 1.
