Macau’s post-election legislature was sworn in last week, and the first thing that came to my mind was that our 33 lawmakers need to keep their eye on the ball by focusing on their core duty: creating legislation that serves the public and benefits the common good.
Chief Executive Sam Hou Fai, Macau’s former chief justice, expressed three expectations regarding the deputies’ four-year term in a meeting shortly after their oath-taking ceremony: to enhance the leadership role of the Legislative Assembly in political terms; to strengthen the legislature’s role in drafting legislation and overseeing the government; and to bolster the legislative body’s role as a key interlocutor, leveraging its broad representativity to reinforce the collection, compilation, and expression of public opinion.
For the first time in the legislature’s nearly five-decade-long history, a senior ex-official of the government, former secretary for Administration and Justice, André Cheong Weng Chon, not only became one of its lawmakers but also its speaker. Additionally, Cheong is one of the legislature’s seven government-appointed legislators. It is also the first time that a lawmaker chosen by the chief executive has become the president of the legislature. Since the establishment of the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) in 1999, he is the first newcomer to the legislative hemicycle to chair the body right away.
Speaking to reporters after he was unanimously elected speaker of the lawmaking body, Cheong emphasised that, in future analyses of legislative projects, he will always consider the real situation of society and present constructive suggestions.
Cheong, 59, who first headed Macau’s Legal Affairs Bureau (DSAJ) and then the Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) before becoming one of Macau’s policy secretaries in 2019 as head of the Public Administration and Justice portfolio, also stated that the focus of his upcoming work at the helm of the legislature will be to promote positive interaction between the executive and legislative powers. He expressed his desire to encourage his fellow lawmakers to strengthen communication with the public in order to gather more opinions from the population.
Cheong pledged that he will leverage his extensive experience in public administration and legal matters to fulfil the three expectations outlined by the chief executive.
The Legislative Assembly was created by the “Estatuto Orgânico de Macau” (Organic Statute of Macau) by the territory’s then Portuguese administrators in 1976. The statute was the result of Portugal’s anti-fascist Carnation Revolution of April 1974, which forsook colonialism. Afterwards, Lisbon changed Macau’s status from an overseas “province” to a territory under temporary Portuguese administration.
Initially, the legislature had 17 deputies: six directly elected by universal suffrage, six indirectly elected by business, labour, and community association representatives, and five appointed by the Lisbon-appointed governor. While the elected lawmakers made up 70.59 percent of the total number of deputies, 29.41 percent were appointed legislators.
At its inception, only Portuguese nationals in Macau had the right to vote. Due to Macau’s unique status at that time, lawmakers were exempt from Portugal’s conscription and had the right to a “special passport.”
While the tripartite composition of the legislature –comprising directly and indirectly elected as well as appointed lawmakers – has remained intact, the total number of deputies has gradually increased. This includes the number of directly and indirectly elected deputies, which now stands at 14 and 12 respectively, i.e., 78.78 percent of the legislature's members are now elected, while the number of appointed lawmakers has remained unchanged at seven since 1991, after the Macau Organic Statute was amended in 1990.
The legislature’s three-segment membership structure was also recognised by the China-Portugal Joint Declaration on the Question of Macau, signed by both countries in Beijing in April 1987. Its Annex I states that the legislature of the MSAR shall be composed of local inhabitants, with a majority of its members chosen by election.
The Joint Declaration, a historic document that facilitated Macau’s smooth return to Chinese administration, also states that the local legislature “may on its own authority enact laws in accordance with the provisions of the Basic Law and legal procedures.”
The Basic Law, enacted in March 1993, devotes 14 of its 145 articles to the Legislative Assembly, stating that it shall be composed of permanent residents. This grants also Macau’s permanent residents holding foreign nationality (like myself) the right to vote and stand as candidates. That’s a generous regulation, indeed.
The Basic Law also lists the legislature’s eight powers and functions, such as “to debate any issue concerning public interests,” apart from the fact that it “may pass a motion of impeachment [of the chief executive] by a two-thirds majority of all its members and report it to the Central People’s Government for decision.”
However, within this context, I need to underline a crucial issue regarding Macau’s political system: the Basic Law’s Article 61 is crystal clear that “the Government of the Macau Special Administrative Region shall be the executive authorities of the Region.” This is one of the Basic Law’s pivotal points, as it formally defines Macau’s political system as “executive-led.”
Moreover, the Western concepts of the three “co-equal” branches of government and separation of powers do not apply to Macau.
In the past four decades as a journalist working in Macau, I have read copious media and academic reports and heard scholars and experts referring to our legislature as a parliament. Nothing could be further from the truth.
While all parliaments are legislatures, not all legislatures are parliaments—it’s as simple as that. Parliaments, as I remember from my political science courses in Munich and Hong Kong, are specific to (Western-style) parliamentary systems, while legislatures exist in various forms of government, including presidential and hybrid systems.
While both terms relate to law-making bodies, “parliament” refers to a specific type of legislature, typically found in parliamentary systems.
Incidentally, the West’s system of separation of powers is increasingly facing fundamental challenges, such as overlapping powers, as the boundaries between the three “branches of government” often blur, leading to conflicts over authority and responsibilities. For instance, executive orders can “conveniently” bypass legislative approval. Judicial activism is another problem in the West, where judges may overreach by making policy decisions rather than simply interpreting the law. The judicialisation of politics, i.e., the transfer of contentious issues of an outright political nature and importance to courts, as well as judicial politicisation, such as by certain countries’ highly politicised supreme courts, shows that the West’s once-sacrosanct principle is increasingly diluted.
As its name clearly indicates, the main task of the local legislature is to make laws. In the local context, this means that our lawmakers should cooperate interactively with government officials in crafting laws that will benefit Macau’s population as a whole and create the right framework for the appropriate diversification and modernisation of its economy.
Based on President Xi Jinping’s principle of people-centred development, Macau’s lawmakers ought to assist the government (that’s their clear role in an executive-led political system) in creating new laws and amending old ones to achieve the best possible outcomes for all of us.
To achieve this goal, they must carefully read all bills before voting on them. Over the past four decades, several lawmakers have told me privately that they have passed laws without scrutinising them in detail. They admitted that after the bills became law, they were shocked to discover provisions they had been completely unaware of.
Lawmakers’ hard work takes place behind closed doors when they are debating, reviewing, and revising government-initiated bills, often with government officials and others invited to attend the committee-level meetings. The advantage of closed-door meetings is that participants talk much more freely than when talking into cameras. As a journalist, I know from long experience that people speak differently when talking off the record or on the record.
However, the committee presidents’ post-committee press briefings could certainly be further improved.
A completely different matter is lawmakers’ off-agenda speeches in the legislature’s hemicycle before the public gallery and in the presence of the print and broadcasting media. These speeches are useful for raising public issues and transmitting concerns from the electorate. However, this could also be optimised by avoiding “soapbox” style rhetoric that does not help solve pressing issues but serves as a means of occasional self-promotion.
I hope that the current lawmakers will keep their eye on the ball—by that I mean to concentrate on modernising Macau’s legal system by endowing it with well-crafted laws.
Just one more point regarding some voices’ criticism that the Legislative Assembly’s new president is a government-appointed lawmaker. I recall one of my first conversations in the mid-1980s with Macau’s then speaker of the legislature, Carlos d’Assumpção, who served as its president from 1976 until his premature passing after a severe illness in 1992. We discussed whether the three segments of lawmakers (directly elected, indirectly elected, government appointed) are differently ranked. His answer was unambiguously clear: “We are equals among equals.” I may add that he was a directly elected deputy and later also a member of the Macau Basic Law Drafting Committee. Besides, he was one of the most erudite persons I have met in my life. I still miss him.
– Harald Brüning
