Political activist and former New Macau Association President (NMA) President Jason Chao has alleged that one of the main reasons for the early closure of the 2019 universal suffrage online survey was prompted by one member of the organisation being held in mainland China at the time.
In August 2019 NMA announced it would launch an online referendum for local residents to express their opinion on if the Macau Chief Executive to be elected through universal suffrage.
The voting was open on August 11 and last until August 25 the official date of that year’s CE election, which resulted in the election of Ho Iat Seng as head of government.
Although no longer a member of the association, the online website for the voting was operated by Chao, who on August 25 of that year stated that the website had been the target of “severe” and “professional” cyber-attacks hailing from mainland China.
The referendum was then officially suspended by NMA, with legislator Sulu Sou Ka Hou revealing that the passivation received a message inferring that if the initiative was not cancelled, this would threaten the security of the organisation and that if the results should not be released before the official CE election or on the same day.
Sou never specified who issued the message or warning, and the exact details of the threat.
In a talk delivered on December 5 remotely by Chao – who is currently in the UK – at the of the g0v summit in Taiwan titled ‘A lesson learnt from failure – 2019 Vote on Universal Suffrage for Chief Executive Election in Macau’, the political activist revealed more details about the incidents surrounding the initiative.
‘Based on the experience in the 2014 vote, the volunteers and the leaders of the organiser wished that the vote could take place in a safe and low-risk environment. As a result, this vote was not named a “referendum”. Also, no ID data would be collected. Macau phone numbers were the only means of verification. The motion had nothing to do with the sole Chief Executive candidate. People were only asked if they wanted to have genuine universal suffrage,’ Chao states in the presentation slides
In 2014, Chao was involved in a similar referendum on electoral reform before that year’s CE election.
The initiative led to the Chinese liaison office to issue a statement saying the city could not hold such a referendum and as a result, the Office for Personal Data Protection (GPDP) requested that poll organizers stop collecting and processing voters’ personal data.
‘Although the 2019 vote was expected to have a much lower risk for not processing sensitive data such as personal information, the voting application was designed under the assumption of processing sensitive data,’ Chao states.
The activist also indicated that prior to the survey, NMA had a meeting with the sole Chief Executive, Ho Iat Seng, who was said to have indicated the group should go forward with the voting.
However, according to Chao just four days after the voting was initiated the online system became the target of cyberattacks, with Chao the attack code contained simplified Chinese characters, and therefore allegedly coming from mainland China.
The attackers were also said to be on a “working shift” from 9:00am to 9:00pm for six days a week, similar to Chinese tech industry workers schedules, Chao states.
With the voting taking place at a time of long-lasting public protests in Hong Kong, Chao also states that several WeChat groups aimed to describe the initiative as promoting the protests.
After some incidents of NMA volunteers involved with the voting at promotional stalls experiencing verbal and physical assault, the remaining stalls were cancelled.
However, Chao at open point of this presentation alleges that a core member of the leadership of the vote organiser who had travelled to mainland China on business.
‘I am not at the liberty to reveal what happened exactly since the vote organiser does not wish to discuss the incident any further. But I can reveal that China presented two demands. Voting had to stop,’ the activists add.
According to a schedule presented by Chao in the presentation, this is incidents took place on November 22, with the NMA announcing the early closure of the voting the next day and the early release of its results.
The activists speculate that due to the background of the Hong Kong protests the announcement of an alternative number ‘would make the outside world perceive that the pro-democracy voice in Macau was connecting to the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong’ and therefore Chinese authorities looked to halt the vote.
‘The impact of the premature closure of the vote could be profound. The general public and the journalists in Macau might lose faith in similar voting initiatives. It would be extremely difficult to organise a credible civil or unofficial vote in Macau in a short period of time,’ Chao alleges.
The version of the events indicated by Chao has yet to be confirmed by legislator Sulu Sou or any of the current NMA leadership.
Chao relocated to Europe in 2017 and is currently doing a PhD at a German university, with a research focus on developing tools for the study of digital media.