Macau chief Ho goes out with a whimper
By Muhammad Cohen
MACAU - It is not easy to be unpopular when you preside over years of
double-digit economic growth. It's even more difficult if there's consensus
that your leadership has put your region on the map as a destination for
investors, tourism and international events. But Macau chief executive Edmund
Ho has managed this rare accomplishment.
With Ho's replacement, Fernando Chui Sai-on, officially chosen on Sunday, it's
time to assess the man he'll succeed. There's little question that Ho presided
over Macau's most eventful decade since buccaneers plied the Pearl River,
leading the 16th century Ming Dynasty to grant Portugal permission to occupy
the city in exchange for securing the trade route. Edmund Ho gets full credit
for creating the conditions that have transformed this city of 550,000
following its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1999, and
his administration gets the blame for failing to anticipate and ameliorate the
accompanying changes that have swept through Macau.
"The Macau government has done a fabulous job over the past 10 years," Melco
Crown Entertainment chief executive officer Lawrence Ho, a second generation
Macau gambling mogul (and no relation to Edmund Ho) whose group's US$2.1
billion City of Dream integrated resort opened last month, said. "Five years
ago when I went to raise money in the US, people didn't even know where Macau
was. Now it's the biggest gaming destination in the world."
"Edmund Ho put Macau on the world map, but so have Colombian drug barons put
Colombia on the world map - for all the wrong reasons," one resident who asked
not be identified, fearing the professional consequences of criticizing the
government, countered. "This was a man with really one idea only - to generate
money at all costs, to the neglect of almost all the other areas of a society’s
development."
Best bet
Ending the 40-year-old gaming monopoly and issuing new casino licenses in 2002
was the biggest factor in Macau's makeover. Ho gets credit for leading and
smoothly implementing the liberalization.
"Since Macau does not have natural resources and its industries - shoes, toys,
textiles and garments - have been declining and vanishing, it was the right
move to expand in the only segment of the economy with the real possibility of
growth," Macau Business magazine founder and publisher Paulo Azevedo observed.
The change brought growth, as promised. Macau’s per capita gross domestic
product has nearly tripled since Ho took office, with more than US$12 billion
of fresh investment and at least that much additional on the drawing board. To
supplement Macau's tourism appeal, Ho worked with China's central government in
Beijing to get a dozen sites in the historic center of Macau placed on the
United Nations' UNESCO World Heritage List to help preserve Macau's
centuries-old legacy as a meeting point between East and West.
The World Heritage designation is one of the few achievements of Ho's
administration that's universally applauded. But typical of Ho’s tenure, Macau
has yet to create laws on preservation, and potential landmark sites outside
the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization boundaries
have been lost to bulldozers. Breakneck development also threatens to obscure
the iconic hilltop Guia Fortress, including the first modern lighthouse on
China's coast, a beloved local symbol that appears on Macau's currency.
The threat to Guia highlights the clash between the new and old Macau that Ho's
government has failed to referee adequately. At first, everyone applauded as
money and visitors poured in. Gaming revenues exploded from MOP23.5 billion
(US$2.9 billion) at 11 casinos in 2002 to MOP109.8 billion at 31 casinos last
year, with 35% of that total earmarked for government coffers as gaming tax.
Visitor numbers rocketed from 9 million in 2002 to more than 30 million last
year.
'... lousy ... outstandingly bad ... awful ...'
Yet the boom failed to translate into lasting popularity for Ho because "it has
come at the expense of the local people, their lost opportunities for
diversified employment and a decent environment for their families," the
resident said. "The social services in Macau continue to be lousy, the health
services are outstandingly bad, the schooling is awful and the complacency that
surrounds it all is stunning. What has made him lose popularity is that he
seems, in practice, not to care, not for people, not for Macau, despite the
rhetoric. He is ineffectual."
The government is running a surplus of roughly US$250 million a month, yet has
no plan to address these deficiencies.
"The [gaming] liberalization was something of a 'big bang', which changed the
landscape of Macau, and the global gaming industry, in a very short period. The
spin offs for Macau's people were, however, largely confined to low-level
casino and construction employment," a close watcher of the economy who asked
not to be identified, said. "The lucrative business opportunities that arose
benefited very few, and the deals that were done were often tainted by the odor
of corruption, cronyism and nepotism."
"Ho failed to realize that transforming a society can't be done without its
citizens," said Azevedo, who came to Macau from Portugal as a reporter two
decades ago. "Sooner or later, hard decisions must be taken to clear the system
of its lack of transparency."
Ao Man Long reach
The lack of transparency became the other dominant theme of Ho's tenure with
the arrest of secretary for transport and public works Ao Man Long on
corruption charges in December 2006. Ao and his family amassed a fortune in
excess of US$100 million, much of it though bribes paid by contracts on major
construction projects, including the 2005 East Asia Games Dome and Venetian
Macao hotel, which at the time was the world's second largest building. The
trial revealed a culture of corruption throughout the government. Although Ao
claimed that Ho had to approve all contracts valued at more than MOP6 million,
the chief executive escaped any legal consequences for the scandal. But his
administration was irreparably tarnished.
The low point came with the May Day protests in 2007. Macau people took to the
streets in unprecedented numbers to demand the government protect local workers
and jobs in the dwindling manufacturing sector. Police clashed with
demonstrators and fired warning shots, hitting a passerby on a motorcycle.
"He lost the plot that led to this and lost the plot afterwards," the resident
said of Ho and the May Day incident. "He failed to gauge correctly the
intensity of the mood of the people. Buying them off with two handouts of cash
[MOP5,000 in 2008 and MOP6,000 this spring], to pre-empt any repetition of May
1st demonstrations, was insulting, and that is the attitude that remains with
me - of complacency and a failure really to engage societal issues or the
people of Macau. He buys them off."
Doing further damage, Ho's government has pressured employers to cut foreign
workers, faux populism that will hurt business and make Macau less attractive
to investors and talent when it needs them.
Bye, bye Zhongnanhai
Ho didn't only lose the plot and the citizens of Macau, if he ever had them,
with the May Day shooting. He lost Beijing, which had praised Macau as its good
Special Administration Region (SAR), compared with larger, more restive Hong
Kong, its other SAR under the one country-two systems policy governing the two
former colonies. China's central government supported Macau's growth by easing
entry restrictions for mainland citizens to enter the enclave. More than half
of Macau's visitors are from the mainland and experts estimate at least an
equivalent portion of its gaming revenue originates there.
It's unlikely that Beijing would have stood by indefinitely while billions of
dollars, legally obtained and otherwise, poured out of the mainland and into
Macau. But Macau's fall from grace undoubtedly made it easier to impose visa
restrictions starting last year on mainlanders entering Macau and, more
importantly, send a message to high rollers that the authorities were watching
them closely.
Earlier this year, Ho's administration orchestrated the enactment of Article
23, the central government's anti-sedition law that restricts dissent, media,
assembly and the free flow of information. It's the measure that sent 500,000
people in Hong Kong into the streets to demonstrate against its adoption there
in 2003. In Macau, it passed with little debate. Most observers saw passage as
a way for Beijing to pressure Hong Kong, but it was more about Ho taking a
bullet for his successor and trying to get Macau back into the good graces of
Beijing.
Macau's great and good fell in line by foregoing the need for voting to chose
the 300 electors to pick the next chief executive. Even those electors became
unnecessary, too, when Fernando Chui Sai-on turned out to be the only candidate
to become Ho's successor. Beijing, like most Macau voters, would probably
prefer the trappings of a genuine contest, but Ho and his supporters are so
isolated from both sides that they can't strike the right chord.
"My overall assessment of his tenure is that of a personable and - in pubic -
kindly man but one who failed to assess carefully enough the situation in
Macau, and failed to identify and then balance priorities, who failed to ensure
that the outcomes of his proposals brought benefits to Macau citizens, who
failed to advance the development of Macau in sufficient directions, who failed
to clean up and streamline the administration of Macau, and who ended up a
remote and ineffective leader who was only a figurehead, and a one-dimensional
one at that," the Macau resident concluded. "He is a man who ran out of steam
very rapidly and early in his tenure of office, who failed to break the
stranglehold of a few key players and families in Macau, and who failed to
bring democracy."
His replacement will be another member of a leading Macau family, the single
candidate in a small circle election. That's where Edmund Ho has led Macau in
its first post-colonial decade.
Macau Business special correspondent and former broadcast news producer Muhammad
Cohen told America’s story to the world as a US diplomat and is author
of
Hong Kong On Air,
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
financial crisis, and cheap lingerie. Follow
Muhammad Cohen’s blog for more on the media and Asia, his adopted home.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
,
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
financial crisis, and cheap lingerie. Follow 
