Chief Executive (CE) Fernando Chui Sai On issued an administrative order published in the Official Gazette (BO) yesterday that the CE election will be held on Sunday, August 31.
By law, all elections in Macau must be held on a Sunday.
This came the day after the 400-members of the Chief Executive Election Commission were elected or selected. The commission will elect Macau’s leader for the next five years.
So far, only Chui has publicly stated that he will run for a second term. Macau’s chief executive can only serve two consecutive five-year terms. Chui said earlier this month that he would go ahead with his re-election bid even though he is suffering from gout. He said that he was undergoing treatment for the condition which was not affecting his ability to work.
In addition, Chui yesterday also issued a resolution which stipulated that the maximum amount each candidate can spend is 5,769,955.96 patacas.
Meanwhile, the final result of Sunday’s election for the CE Election Commission members has been put up beside the entrance of the Public Administration Building in Rua do Campo.
Mai Man Ieng, president of the Vote Count Verification Committee, said that election staff had found 198 void votes but four of them were later deemed valid after they had been examined by the committee. This meant that there were 4,241 valid votes, accounting for 94.14 percent of the total number of votes cast.
Many of the votes were invalid due to the fact that voters did not follow the rules when casting their ballots. Instead of choosing their preferred candidates by using the pen provided by election staff they used their own pen, while others marked the boxes beside the candidate’s names with various symbols rather than filling in the complete box.
In one case, a voter simply wrote “Universal suffrage for the CE! Oppose small-circle elections!” in Chinese on the ballot paper.
Mai also said that in the election, 19 candidates ran in the sports sector from which 17 were chosen, 63 candidates ran in the labour sector where 59 were elected, while 29 out of 31 candidates in the sports sector became members of the Commission. For the remaining sectors, the number of candidates was equal to the number of spots available. (macaunews/macaupost)
