Macau’s former culture secretary Fernando Chui looks like a shoe-in as the territory’s next chief executive after potential rivals appeared to turn a little shy.
To say Dr Chui’s rivals have withdrawn isn’t accurate, because they never declared their candidacy in the first place. The city’s chief prosecutor Ho Chio was widely seen as Dr Chui’s only possible threat in the poll, but would need to resign as a government official in order to stand. The deadline for that was yesterday. At the time Asian Gaming Intelligence went online, no announcement to that effect had been made.
So what sort of chief exec will Dr Chui be? Don’t expect anything too radical or too much of a departure from the policies of the incumbent Edmund Ho. Dr Chui has pretty good family credentials as far as Beijing is concerned. His late uncle was a leading supporter of the Communist Party during the final decades of Portuguese administration leading up to the handover in 1999.
Macau’s former gaming monopolist Dr Stanley Ho has declared his support for Dr Chui’s candidacy. That should not necessarily be counted as a blessing in terms of relations with foreign investors, given the recent row over New Jersey’s attitude to Dr H.
The new Macau Chief Executive will take up his (or her) post in December.
