Time not ripe for universal suffrage: Ho Iat Seng

One day after the public consultation on political reform ended, lawmaker Ho Iat Seng has said time is not ripe even for discussing the possibility of electing the Chief Executive and the Legislative Assembly (AL) through universal suffrage.
As the only Macau member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), Ho said that the Basic Law did not stipulate that the Chief Executive should ultimately be elected through universal suffrage.
The same also applied to the election of AL, so any public discussion over this topic had no legal grounds and would end in nothing, he told journalists on the sidelines of a media dinner.
The AL vice-president also said amending the Basic Law was a mammoth project outside the city’s legal competence.
The New Macau Association has called for the Chief Executive to be elected by universal suffrage in 2014 and representatives from media associations and the social affairs and culture sectors also called for a roadmap to a fully democratic system, during the consultation.
In response to criticism that the indirectly elected lawmakers did not have sufficient legitimacy, Ho – an indirectly elected legislator himself – stressed all AL members shared the same vision of addressing the public’s concerns and should not be differentiated due to the way they were elected.
The Macau General Union for Neighbourhood Associations (know as Kai Fong in Cantonese) met with Chief Executive Fernando Chui Sai On and called for democratisation over the two elections.
The influential organisation called for the creation of two more indirectly elected AL seats that should go to representatives from the social services, labour, professional and education sectors, to achieve a more balanced representation.
On Monday the Kai Fong also requested that two more seats be made available for direct election, as well as 100 more members for the Chief Executive election committee.
The government has just concluded a public consultation over political reform and announced yesterday that the report on the month-long campaign would be submitted to the NPC early this month, as a further step towards a possible amendment to the electoral laws.
The consultation campaign was widely criticised by civic groups as biased and flawed.