Using public money to sue the public?

Natalie Leung

One of the hottest topics in Macau recently is definitely the draft law that if approved, would afford financial aid to civil servants when they are being sued or suing a third person due to execution of their public duties.
Society and the news media are focussing mainly on Article 4, that says “when there is strong evidence showing the applicant [civil servant] is a victim of intimidation or crimes of retaliatory nature, and the behaviour has harmed his/her life, physical integrity, freedom, reputation or relatively huge amount of property [meaning over MOP 150,000]”, then the civil servant can apply to have the legal costs settled by the public funds when initiating a lawsuit against the “offender”, who can be a civilian, a reporter, a critic, or simply, anyone.
I’m a reporter and I do point out what I think is not right, especially in this column. Like most of the other media workers in Macau we’re concerned about protecting freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and we certainly don’t want to trade these fundamental components of a civilised and open society for saving us from the trouble of being sued by an official, who is financially backed by the Government.
While this provision has drawn most of the concerns and criticisms, maybe we should step back and try to look at the bill as a whole and what has gone wrong.
The Government’s intention, as stressed by secretary for Administration and Justice Florinda Chan, is to extend the existing judicial aid mechanism from the Judiciary Police (PJ) and the prison guards to all public workers.
Whether or not it is necessary to have every single civil servant covered by the mechanism is the question. Without a doubt the PJ and prison guards are frontline civil servants who are more vulnerable to physical injuries and threats (now I start to wonder why the Public Security Police are excluded) and certainly it’s justified for them to enjoy such protection from the Government.
Anyway, I think the problem here is not the Government’s desire to help its employees in lawsuits, but that it plans to do so by using public funds.
As former president of the Legislative Assembly Susana Chou blogged last month, it seems some of the government officials have nowadays forgotten that they are just the “manager” and not the owner of the public funds.
Wouldn’t that be absurd when a local civilian finds out that he is being sued by a government official who is using the money that is in fact jointly owned by all Macau residents? It’s just like seeing someone using your money to sue you. How ironic is that.
Florinda Chan insists that it won’t be easy for civil servants to get the aid and if the court eventually rules that the lawsuit is actually initiated for personal interests, the aid will be revoked and they will also have to face disciplinary and criminal action. However, we can’t overlook the fact that once the law is passed, the rights will then be there for public workers to use at anytime they want, and even if the Government withdraws the assistance, the lawsuit has already been commenced and concluded, and the defendant has already gone through months or years of unnecessary stress and anxiety.
The independent commission that will be set up to advise the Chief Executive before he decides whether or not to approve the funding isn’t convincing either, since the secretary has already admitted that the members are to be appointed by the Chief Executive himself.
Some local media workers appear to be upset by the Government’s actions in recent months. What I would like to say after all is that I strongly suggest our Government Spokesperson, Alexis Tam Chon Weng, disclose his mobile number to the news media organisations, so that we are able to seek timely and direct clarification from him whenever there are any “rumours” about the Government.