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HARALD
BRUNING'S MACAU
The last Portuguese governor showed great disrespect for diplomatic etiquette when he last week publicly accused his Chinese successor of breach of word. General Vasco Rocha Vieira launched the personal attack on Chief Executive Edmund Ho Hau-wah in an article in Portugal's best-selling weekly, Expresso. Macau's ex-governor claimed that Mr Ho had "broken an express commitment" to publicly support his troubled Jorge Alvares Foundation (JAF). The article asserted that Mr Ho had given his "express assent" to the establishment of the JAF before the handover last December. It also attacked unidentified politicians in Portugal and Macau for their "unjustifiable suspicions" and "incomprehensible silence" over the controversy that were "incompatible with [Portugal's] national dignity". Observers have described the ex-governor's highly charged article as his political swansong. General Vieira resigned as president of the JAF this week, maintaining that the foundation had become meaningless to him. Mr Ho was his usual magnanimous self when he responded to the attack, which he described as a "misunderstanding between friends". After all, the Chief Executive's first name, Hau, means magnanimity. He also said he could understand General Vieira's "frustration" over the controversy. While Mr Ho never said that he did not know of the pre-handover transfer of 50 million patacas (about HK$48.5 million) from the public Macau Co-operation and Development Foundation to the private JAF in Lisbon last December, he insisted that it would have been improper to give his formal consent to measures taken by the Portuguese administration at that time. Analysts believe that General Vieira's article was also directed against Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio and other top officials in Lisbon who stayed clear of the controversy. Mr Sampaio, to whom General Vieira was politically answerable until the handover, said the JAF was a "private initiative" unrelated to Portugal's national dignity. The row over the JAF's public funding from Macau has assumed theatrical proportions in the Lisbon media. One report claimed the controversy was meant to "politically liquidate" the ex-governor, to prevent him from running for president of Portugal. The Expresso weekly published a repugnantly immoral editorial on the issue by insisting that "in a territory [Macau] where gambling generates nearly 20 billion patacas per year, does a public controversy about 50 million patacas, which corresponds to the gambling revenue of just one day, make any sense?" The weekly received dozens of mostly negative e-mail messages in response to General Vieira's article and its editorial. The dispute over his foundation has turned General Vieira into one of Macau's most controversial governors in recent history. While he is still seen by some as the epitome of political rectitude and Portuguese patriotism, others regard him as a high-handed bureaucrat and vindictive autocrat, who did a great disservice to his nation by launching a stinging attack on his successor. Disagreement between the ex-governor and Mr Ho came to a head during the Chief Executive's official visit to Lisbon last month, when General Vieira urged his successor to publicly denounce the outcome of a confidential inquiry into the JAF. Mr Ho said he "politely declined" the request. The leaked inquiry, commissioned by Mr Ho after news of the 50-million-pataca transfer emerged in Macau in January, found that the transaction was illegal. In obvious disdain for public sentiment in Macau, the trustees of the JAF have decided to keep the money. Harald Bruning is the Post's Macau correspondent.
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