“Time has come” to replace top judge – Neto Valente

The president of the Macau Lawyers Association (AAM), Jorge Neto Valente, has told TDM Radio Macau that the time has come for the SAR’s top judge, Sam Hou Fai, to leave the position he has held since the 1999 handover.
Mr Valente added that the president of the Court of Final Appeal (TUI) Sam is responsible for the lack of evolution in the region’s legal system. 

“By the same rationale and criteria that the Central Government has changed all senior officials after a few years, I think it is time to change. It is nothing personal. The Court is simply unable to evolve,” Mr Valente said in an interview aired this weekend as he is seeking a new term as AAM head unopposed. Neto Valente has been the president of the city’s bar association since 2002 and served in the same position between 1995 and 2000.

The city’s top lawyer also stressed that Sam Hou Fai also chairs the Judiciary Magistrates Council, “a body that also fails to evolve.”    

Mr Sam has chaired the TUI since the establishment of the Macau Special Administrative Region and the current three-year term ends in December.