Macau Opinion | The Collective Memory

The Macau Commission of Audit has just published a report on the warehouses of the Cultural Institute. The conclusion is absolutely unbelievable in a modern society. There are cases where the listing does not exist. And the processing of documents is inadequate. Books and documents are part of the collective memory of the people of Macau, of all of us. I do not want to believe that the situation is caused by a lack of memory of the government or, even worse, a way of erasing, deleting or formatting such memory.

In a city with lorry-loads of money to move thing forward, situations such as the one described in this report must be immediately conveyed in order to keep our cultural values preserved.

A society is also the acquis of books and documents which will help future generations to better understand where they are. Maybe previous responsible people did not care about these matters and cared more about acquiring books which are then deposited as shelter for crawling beings such as rats, roaches and similar creatures.

The neglect is part of our society. If we take a short walk in some areas we will find that the lack of civilization is glaring. Macau needs to put itself in the forefront of the world. It has the capacity, people. It lacks, of course, vision in making it the best place in the world one can aspire to live in. One of these days, neighbouring regions will look at Macau as one of those places which lost the convoy of modernity.

It will then be too late to change things.

Education and cultural values must always – but always – be the priority of those who occupy political positions. Not understanding this is to not understand that serving society is different to serving themselves.

*Lawyer and regular contributor to MNA