The Judiciary Magistrates Council has issued a statement censuring comments made by the President of the Macau Lawyers Association (AAM), Jorge Neto Valente, criticising the President of the Court of Final Appeal (TUI), Sam Hou Fai, for referring to an ongoing court case involving the local government.
In an interview with TDM Radio, Valente alleged that the judge had violated the Statute of Magistrates during his speech for the opening of the 2020/2021 Judicial Year by referring to a court ruling by the Court of Second Instance (TSI) and that has been appealed to the TUI.
The case in question refers to a ruling by the TSI ordering the local government and municipal authorities to provide a compensation of more than MOP100 million and return a land plot in Taipa to an undisclosed company due to failure to register a land expropriation in 1918.
During his speech, Sam Hou Fai stated that amendments recently introduced to the Basic Law on Judicial Organization and the Code of Civil Procedure enabled the local Government to appeal this judgment to the top court, with Valente considering with these comments the judge was inferring that the TUI should overturn the previous TSI decision as a way to “repair an injustice”.
Valente considered that the judge had breached paragraph 1 of Article 25 of the Statute of Magistrates, which expresses that magistrates may not make statements or make comments regarding proceedings, adding that the comments “called into question the principle of impartiality of the courts”.
In a response issued today, the Judiciary Magistrates Council argued that Valente “deliberately distorted, misinterpreted and wrongly defined” the judge’s comments.
According to the council, the judge was commenting on the impact of the expansion of TUI’s competence and that any “common man” could not interpret the judge’s comments the same way Valente did.
“What was said by President Sam Hou Fai in his speech did not address the substantive legal issue of the case, much less were there comments on if the sentence of the case was appropriate or not, [with the judge] only mentioning that the Government has already filed an appeal under the law, so in no way constitutes the imputed violation,” the council statement indicated.
The council added that the TSI issued a decision in the referred process on September 10 September of the current year, with the Public Prosecutor-general and the Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM) having filed appeals to the TUI on September 23 and 28, respectively, and with government members having already spoken publicly on the subject, before Sam Hou Fai made his speech on October 14.
“Dr. Jorge Neto Valente, as a lawyer who has been in the profession for more than 40 years and who has chaired the Macau Association of Lawyers for over 20 years, when uttering the above-mentioned statements, deliberately distorted, misinterpreted and wrongly defined the content of Mr. President Sam Hou Fai’s speech, misleading most residents and damaging the image of the TUI, its president and other judicial magistrates, which is why the Council of Judicial Magistrates regrets and disapproves the words of Dr. Valente,” the council added.
