The Legislative Assembly (AL) passed Tuesday a government-drafted bill to amend the Chief Executive Election Law, according to which two members of the Chief Executive Election Committee will come from the city’s future municipal organisation.
The bill’s outline was passed during a plenary session of the legislature in August.
The government proposed the chief executive election law amendment bill, after the legislature passed in July passed a government-initiated bill on the establishment of a non-political municipal organisation.
The new municipal organisation will be established on January 1 next year when the Civic and Municipal Affairs Bureau (IACM) will be abolished.
The local government’s proposal to establish a non-political municipal organisation is based on Section 5 of Chapter 4 of the Macau Basic Law which calls for the establishment of “municipal organisations which are not organs of political power”.
The Macau Basic Law’s Annex 2 states that the 400-member Chief Executive Election Committee includes 50 members which are: 1) representatives chosen from among the city’s lawmakers; 2) all the local deputies to the National People’s Congress (NPC); 3) representatives chosen from among local deputies to the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC); and 4) representatives chosen from among members of the city’s municipal organs.
As there are currently no municipal organisations in the city, those 50 members are currently 22 lawmakers, 12 local NPC deputies and 16 local CPPCC National Committee deputies, according to the current version of the Chief Executive Election Law.
Macau’s current legislature has 33 members. There are 12 Macau deputies to the NPC, while there are 37 Macau members of the CPPCC National Committee.
The bill passed Tuesday states that two local CPPCC National Committee deputies in the Chief Executive Election Committee will be replaced by two members of the new municipal organisation.
The bill also states that the two members from the municipal organisation on the Chief Executive Election Committee will be elected from among the members of the administrative committee and the consultative committee under the municipal organisation.
Non-establishment lawmakers Ng Kuok Cheong, Au Kam San and Sulu Sou Ka Hou voted against the bill.
Ng and Au described the bill as “unreasonable”, while Sou said the bill had failed to make the chief executive election more democratic.
