Luiz Pedruco, 60, will head a bid for the 2013 AL elections. The former Macanese Association President is about to set up a new association to facilitate involvement in the political issues that affect Macau, but will also play a cultural role. In an interview with the Times, the public accountant (CPA) analyzes the failure of previous Macanese lists and reveals the ideas he wants to highlight during the next electoral campaign. For him, the priority for Macau lies in better education for residents.
Macau Daily Times – At what stage are you in the process of collecting signatures to apply for a place in the Legislative Assembly? Do you already have the 300 signatures required?
Luiz Pedruco – The first step in order for our candidacy be validated is to collect between three to five hundred signatures. We started that about ten days ago. Our aim is primarily to start off with the Portuguese-Macanese community and then work our way to the Chinese and all the other communities around Macau. So far we have a very good response and we are collecting quite a few signatures. I believe it’s well over one hundred. I have asked for support from the various personalities in Macau and I have confirmation that Dr Fernando Gomes, the president of the Portuguese in the diaspora [Council of Portuguese Communities] will subscribe to my list as one of the proponents. Dr Pereira Coutinho has also accepted to subscribe as a proponent to my list.
MDT – Up to now, did you receive the political support that you were expecting?
LP – I think that we are getting a lot of support from the public at large, especially the Macanese and the Portuguese communities. Actually it’s beyond our expectations. The support has been really overwhelming and it’s been very encouraging as they appreciate that someone has got that courage to put his name forward in something that is as challenging as the election for the Legislative Assembly. Especially in this term, it’s very competitive. As far as [getting support from] other members of the community, it’s really up to them. It’s probably a bit too early now [to tell], given that we still have more than four months to go before the elections. The list has to be submitted by the end of June, and then we have until July 8 to finalize the members of the list and the program.
MDT – What made you run for this post?
LP – I have been involved in politics for over twenty years in Macau. I made the first attempt to set up a Macanese association back in 1992. Finally we managed to get the Macanese association going in 1996, which is still going at the moment. I was the founding president of that association, in which I served as President for three terms – between 1996 and 2002. Having been involved in the civic area of Macau with the experience I have had here for the last twenty-odd years, but not directly in politics, I thought that it was about time that I gave a bit of a contribution to Macau. It’s a responsibility but also an obligation for people to participate in the civic life of Macau. For me, turning 61 next month, I think I might as well give it a shot now before I get too old [laughs].
MDT – Is your candidature of an ethnic nature, made to defend the interests of the Macanese community?
LP – Once you become an AL member as a deputy, it goes beyond your ethnicity. It is the responsibility of all AL members to fight for the interests of all the residents of Macau. Therefore I will not put any other nationality or ethnicity ahead of any other. All deserve to have their rights protected, and it is definitely my intention to take care of the needs of all these people.
MDT – What will be the broad guidelines of the program of your list? When will it be presented publicly?
LP – We mention a few items. One thing that is extremely important is the internationalization of Macau. To do this, I do not mean that we bring people from overseas to work in Macau. The intention is to raise the standards of the local residents to an international level. I think that is a very important role that we will play, not only as an AL member, should I be elected, but with the association that we are forming at the moment [Macau XXI Century Association]. The internationalization of Macau will begin with the lusophone community. For Macau to be the platform between China and the Portuguese-speaking countries, it’s imperative that the Macau people participate more actively in the development of this relationship. Our role will be to complement what the Macau Forum is doing, not so much on the business side of things but in the technical professional sector. Macau people have a good grounding in Portuguese-European culture, and the Portuguese speaking countries have inherited the Portuguese culture to some extent. The Macau people have the privilege to know how this culture functions, so they should find a niche market in providing professional and technical services between the Chinese business people and the Portuguese-speaking business people.
If we can get education right, we will develop our societyMDT – That function is part of the historical role that the Macanese community has been playing over the centuries… But you think that role should be strenghtened.
LP – Under the Portuguese government, Macau has played this role. But since the change (the handover) I’m not convinced that this role has maintained its momentum. I have to concentrate our efforts in building up a group of people who have the training from Portugal or overseas countries and have now come back to Macau looking for opportunities. Those opportunities don’t rest only in Macau, but rest in Macau as a bridge between China and the Portuguese speaking countries. It’s about intensifying that and working in parallel with the Macau Forum. The Forum has been around for ten years and, even though as you say, Macau traditionally was a platform, it has only been so in a very structural way since China took over.
MDT – What are the main problems that Macau society has to solve now?
LP –As most people can, I can name problems such as the lack of good hospitals. The health care system is not adequate, the transport system is not the best, the housing situation is problematic – with the rental and the cost of purchasing a house – the traffic, the pollution. There are a lot of things talked about, but I think that we should focus on education. Education should be the prime area for the government to look into. If we can get education right, we will develop our society and our people to a level that easily overcomes all the problems that we have.
MDT – You mentioned the necessity of raising people to an ‘international level.’ Are you thinking about cases like Hong Kong or Singapore?
LP – By ‘international level’ I mean what Macau needs to offer right now. Macau is the leading player in the gaming industry and the gaming industry brings about other peripheral businesses. When we have so many activities in Macau, hopefully we will bring to bear a level of expertise to be able to fill those jobs. To do that we need to raise our standards, instead of constantly bringing in high-level management from overseas. As long as they are needed, as long as Macau needs those people, the terms of those people should be clearly defined [to stipulate] that they are here to train the local people to eventually take over the positions that they hold. Singapore and Hong Kong have totally different dynamics. Singapore is an international city not because of gambling and Hong Kong is one of the biggest financial centers in the world, as is Singapore. But Macau is not a financial center and depends mainly on the casinos and the peripheral businesses. This does not mean that we are not internationalized; but we are different from Singapore and Hong Kong.
MDT – The lack of continuity in policy work during the period in between elections has occurred before with Macanese lists. Do you see what happened with the candidacy of Casimiro Pinto as a failure?
LP – I was very surprised that they didn’t take it one step further. Everything indicated to me, both during the election and straight after, that they had all the intentions to create an association and eventually run for elections again. It turns out, nearly four years later, that they didn’t go ahead and set up the association. I can sympathize with that, because to form an association is not a very easy thing to do, especially in Macau, because there are so many associations and so many people with different interests. When you want to take an association that has any type of connotation with politics, people become very weary of participating. The composition of the people who want to put up the association and its objectives are usually carefully scrutinized by those involved. Nevertheless, I thought that they would have gone ahead and set up the association. It was a pity that they didn’t. In our case we are starting with the association first before the election.
MDT – So you don’t want to repeat what happened with the previous project… Will Macau XXI Century Association continue the project beyond elections?
LP – We want to contribute for the betterment of Macau. We want to do it through the process of elections, but that process happens every four years and the intensity of it only happens five or six months before the election. The political participation for the election is very short-term, but an association has the right and the obligation to continue for as long as there are people involved.
MDT – Is the plan is to have regular political activity in between elections?
LP – The association will work independently of the election, although up until September 15 there may be things that are very much political. But not everything is necessarily political. There will be other areas like culture and entertainment. (…) The association will touch on all aspects of the civic life of Macau. We will organize events and talks. We will invite people of substance to share their views on Macau’s current situation.
The association will work independently of the electionMDT – Will you be the chairman of this new association?
LP – We haven’t decided on the composition yet. After the association is set up we will have some more news regarding that.
MDT – The Macanese Association that you headed is now focused on cultural issues and discards any involvement in politics. How do you comment on this tendency?
LP – When I set up the association, the times were different. There was a very tense uncertainty during the nineties and the role that the association played was extremely political to a point that we were asked to comment on a lot of issues, including upon whether the Macanese should take up Chinese or Portuguese nationality on the twentieth of December, whether there should be a garrison in Macau on the nineteenth to the twentieth. Our role was very much to do with this transition period. Afterwards, the role of the Macanese Association mellowed to more cultural and social activities. Right now, I think that the association is doing a good job in the area to which they have decided to dedicate themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that; every period has its priorities.
MDT – The number of voters for previous Macanese lists was very disappointing. Realistically, do you expect to be elected on September 15?
LP – I and my team will certainly do our best and work with the aim of getting a list in. That’s the objective – to find enough votes to put somebody in. I know that’s very ambitious, but nevertheless when you are in the race, you hope to finish the race with a fairly good rank.
MDT – What, in your opinion, are the causes for the low voting for the previous Macanese lists, headed by António Freitas (2001), Sales Marques (2005) and Casimiro Pinto (2009)? The votes they received don’t even cover the Macanese community…
LP – I don’t know how they developed their campaign. All three of these candidates didn’t receive very many votes. One thing that was apparent was that they only decided to run in May or June, three or four months before the due date. But I think that it is very difficult to get the momentum going even when you have three or five months, whilst in my case we put together a team over a year ago. We manifested our intention back in February of 2012, and a lot of work has been done. Hopefully with that sort of time we can project our program and the people that support us would have more time to think about what we are doing. If you start something three or five months before the elections, it doesn’t matter how good you are or how hard you are working. There’s a timing problem; not enough time to really convince the electorate to vote. Now, we have started fourteen months ago and we have encouraged a lot of people to register as voters, which is very important, because the registration stopped on December 31 last year.
MDT – Do you hope to mobilize part of the voting community that traditionally abstain?
LP – About 40% of the people who are eligible to vote don’t go and vote. That 40%, in my estimation, would represent 100,000 voters. Maybe this is the group of people that we will be hoping come out and vote.
MDT – How do you evaluate the so-called political reform process that occurred here?
LP – The process could have been done in a different way. I would have preferred that the number of directly-elected be increased to 16 and the indirect remain at ten. I think that the gradual increase of the direct election [positions] gives a bit of an opportunity for the population at large to participate and vote for more people.
MDT – The aim is universal suffrage?
LP – Eventually we will get direct suffrage. As people mature and take on [civic] responsibility and become more aware of the circumstances surrounding their vote, election by the population at large will eventually happen.