Re-elected Chief Executive Fernando Chui Sai On promised Sunday that he would not disappoint the public in his second term that begins on December 20.
Chui made the pledge in a speech acknowledging his re-election.
Chui thanked residents for their support, and promised that he will put his campaign promises into action.
Chui, the sole candidate of the fourth-term chief executive election, was re-elected by 380 of the 396 members of the Chief Executive Election Committee who cast their ballots at Macau Dome Sunday morning, garnering 95.96 percent of the ballot. He won 95.27 percent of the votes in his first election in 2009.
Addressing a press conference held immediately after his re-election, Chui said, “We will review the development
of the gaming industry as I said in my campaign pledge.
“We will review it as part of positioning Macau as a world-class leisure centre.
“The government also cares about the livelihood of people here.”
Chui also promised that he would solve the overlapping functions of government bureaus while insisting that the number of five policy secretaries would remain unchanged.
The election started at 10 a.m. at Macau Dome. The whole procedure lasted for about one and a half hours during which 396 members of the 400-head committee cast their secret ballots.
The four absent members included Legislative Assembly President Ho Iat Seng, one of 12 the local deputies to the National People’s Congress (NPC) who is the sole local member of the NPC Standing Committee, as well the high-profile lawmaker-cum-unionist Jose Pereira Coutinho.
Ho was attending an important meeting by the NPC Standing Committee in Beijing while Coutinho told reporters after the election that he decided not to attend the election because its outcome was a foregone conclusion.
As five years ago, Chui again ran unopposed. Chui only needed to obtain votes from more than half of the members of the election committee. For the election to be valid, at least two thirds of the members had to attend.
Summarising the election, Chief Executive Electoral Management Committee President Song Man Lei said Chui obtained 380 votes in support of his re-election, thirteen blank and three invalid votes, resulting in a total of 396 votes cast.
Chui’s second-term government will start on December 20.
During the press conference, which lasted about half an hour, Chui responded to questions from seven reporters.
When asked what his government would do to streamline its cumbersome administrative structure and while the government has said that it would recruit 5,000 more public servants next year which seemed to contradict his political promise of streamlining the bloated bureaucracy, Chui said that his next government would pay close attention to administrative reform and improve public administration efficiency by solving the overlapping functions of some of the bureaus.
Currently, the government employs about 27,000 people.
He also said that the number of five policy secretaries would remain unchanged. He did not elaborate.
“We’ll focus on solving the overlapping functions of the bureaus in order to improve administrative efficiency. For instance… [we received some opinions that] the Macau Government Tourist Office should come under the Secretariat for Economy and Finance… and various bureaus in charge of sea, land and air transport should be merged into one bureau,” said Chui, adding he had not decided who his next five policy secretaries will be.
Asked by reporters about the main targets of his new government, Chui said that its first priority was to tackle Macau people’s livelihood issues by providing Macau residents with better job opportunities through education.
“Education is key to cultivate the talent of locals, providing Macau residents with opportunities to get a better job,” said Chui, adding that his second-term government would provide retraining for locals who have not finished secondary school, especially croupiers.
Responding to public criticisms of the way the Judiciary Police (PJ) handled the city’s “civic referendum” controversy last week, Chui said he believed the police were doing their job according to the law, adding, “I’ll only return to work as chief executive on September 1 [today]. I was an election candidate over the last two weeks.”
Meanwhile, the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in Macau said in a statement Sunday the election showed the “successful” implementation of the “One Country, Two Systems” principle and Macau Basic Law, adding it believed that Chui’s new government will overcome any challenges with the central government’s support.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chan-ying said in a statement that he congratulated Chui on his re-election, adding he would like to see more co-operation between the two cities for the benefit of the Pearl River Delta Region.
Macau’s first chief executive Edmund Ho Hau Wah also congratulated Chui in a statement, saying that for the last five years Chui had governed Macau with a transparent government focused on residents’ benefits.
Speaking to TDM reporters, Lu Chang-shui, who heads the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Macau, also conveyed his congratulations to Chui on his re-election and said he hoped the two territories will further enhance co-operation during Chui’s next term.(macaunews-macaupost)
