Ho Iat Seng, the sole Chief Executive (CE) candidate, said on the press conference today that promoting a CE election through universal suffrage is written in the Basic Law and is a target for Macau, while claiming that he will strive to advance with political reforms.
However, Mr. Ho emphasized that the Mainland Central government has the initiative for reforming the political structure in Macau, thus the Macau SAR government is in a passive position on this issue.
“The Basic Law allows Macau to hold a general election for the Chief Executive, but does not allow a general election for the Legislative Assembly (AL), […] However, since China is a unitary state, Macau SAR could not amend our political system merely by ourselves,” he said.
While emphasizing the importance of strengthening the ‘one country, two systems’ policy in Macau as well as facilitating ‘governance of Macau by its people’ in the future, as an example of the success of this form of government to Taiwan.
“The ‘one country, two systems’ is impacted by the current situations in the neighboring city, thus Macau has to do it better and show an example of implementing ‘one country, systems’ to Taiwan,” he added.
“The Macau SAR government has done a great number of works on improving the relations between Macau and the central government as well as promoting ‘governance of Macau by its people’, […] but the current situations in Hong Kong, especially some actions by youths, of destroying national flags, crossed a political red line and distorted the ‘One country Two systems’,” he added.
Last week a group of Hong Kong protesters hurled a Chinese national flag into Victoria Harbor as part of the ongoing protests in the city.
Although the CE candidate refused to comment on the ongoing protests and conflicts in the neighboring SAR, he was confident that the Hong Kong SAR government could solve the situation with the backup of the Mainland Central government and return to the city to a peaceful status quo.
