Macao News

Amélia António

Catarina Brites Soares — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 16:07:01 +0800

Co-founder of The Macao Lawyers Association, first to open a group law firm and head of Macao’s Casa de Portugal for more than a decade, Amélia António has remained unwavering in all the causes she’s fought for. She was born in January 1945 in Lisbon and the first hurdle she had to face in life was the death of her mother when she was seven, which left her in the care of her aunts. When her Aunt Julia died, then 17-year-old Amélia was forced to abandon her dreams of higher education and go to work. She moved from one job to another, working in an embroidery shop, at the post office, in a clinical analysis laboratory, as well as in offices. She took whatever came her way because, as she tells it, jobs were hard to come by. “Much less for someone my age who’d just finished school.” At 16 years old, Amélia started working at the Igreja de São Domingos’ youth centre by Rossio Square in Lisbon, an experience she credits for her change in perspective. “I came into contact with a very violent social situation,” she says, referring to her work with underprivileged children. During these two years, she was once again confronted with injustice, a feeling that she was already familiar with having lost her mother to epilepsy. “When I grew up, I realised it was a disease that could be controlled and treated. I became totally disgusted with the system we were living in, and that made me take an interest in social issues,” she explains, adding that “people don’t become politicised because ideas are sold to them, they gain political awareness because of what they see and experience [around them].”

“People don’t become politicised because ideas are sold to them, they gain political awareness because of what they see and experience [around them].”

Amélia's own growing awareness led her to join the struggle against the authoritarian ‘Estado Novo’ regime, which first came to power in 1933, more than a decade before she was born. Cooperativa DEVIR, a literary association where she worked, was associated with the democratic movement that arose after the 1969 legislative elections. The position made her a target: she was imprisoned twice – first, for a few days in 1970, then for three months in 1971. The association was forcibly shut down in December 1972, with riot police arresting dozens.On 25 April 1974, she stood in central Lisbon’s Carmo Square when Marcelo Caeteano, Portugal’s then-prime minister and last leader of the Estado Novo, surrendered. “We urged civilians to crowd into the square to prevent authorities from firing at the soldiers leading the popular revolt,” she explains.

New life

After the revolution, she was able to continue her studies while working at the South and Islands Bankers Union (SBSI) as an administrative officer, where she remained from 1971 until 1982. She decided to study law, something completely different from her teenage dream of becoming a teacher of Romance languages, driven by her passion for literature. “With the political ups and downs, I realised my future would be difficult as a teacher. Also, the contact with reality made me feel that the law could be useful in a much more immediate manner,” stresses the lawyer, who is fluent in English and French, as well as Portuguese. She finished law school at the University of Lisbon in 1980 and after a two-year internship headed to Macao with her husband, who had accepted an invitation to work as a jurist at the Issuing Institute of Macau (Instituto Emissor de Macau), now the Monetary Authority of Macao. Amélia arrived in 1982 and began at the Macao Business Centre, where she provided legal support for setting up businesses and companies. A year later, she decided to join three other lawyers, including her husband, to open the city’s first group law firm in 1984. “It was considered a joke. They said things would go very badly, but it was time to break new ground,” she recalls. “It was tough. Some months, there wasn’t enough money to go round, but things gradually got better. We began to earn people’s trust. Everyone said that it would be horrible, that no other women were lawyers and that they’d never take me seriously. But I never had problems.” Even as she faced that challenge, another loomed in the distance. The upcoming transfer of administration in Macao meant there was an urgent need to set up a regulatory body for lawyers and Amélia once again rolled up her sleeves. She co-founded The Macao Lawyers Association in 1989 with Carlos Assumpção, Francisco Gonçalves Pereira, among others, which later became a public institution in 1991. She was its secretary-general until 1995 and a member of the High Advocacy Council from 2001 to 2003. She also represented the profession in the Judiciary Council of Macao, from 1993 until its disbandment during the transition process in 1999.

Macao is home

Despite widespread apprehension about changing times due to the transition, Amélia never considered leaving. Two years beforehand, in 1997, she had adopted her children, Clara and Noel. “My life and my home were here. I’ve never regretted it,” she assures. Her visits to mainland China – at the invitation of the authorities – as a lawyer and member of the association, helped her decide to remain in Macao despite fears of what could potentially happen after 1999. “The system that would stay had to play a support role, besides the legal aspects,” she says. “If all the lawyers decided to leave, the system would collapse. There was a lot of concern on the Chinese side about making sure that the lawyers stayed.” She says that some things in Macao post-transition have changed for the better, while others have not. “Like everything in life, nothing is perfect,” she concludes. The city would end up placing yet another challenge in the path of Amélia – Casa de Portugal (House of Portugal). She accepted her place on the board of its General Assembly in 2003, and later joined the management board, which she has headed since 2005. “We’re responsible for upholding a certain difference and helping Macao continue to be seen as a place with a specific identity. That’s why there has to be acknowledgement and respect for the Portuguese community, which can only happen if a structure whose work is recognised is in place,” she stresses. “There’s no nostalgia here, but rather history. Macao is only Macao because it had that experience. Otherwise, it would be just another district of China.” She spends most of her free time with her family, even though her responsibilities with Casa de Portugal, which “have grown a lot,” occupy her a great deal and leave her with no hobbies. Her dedication has not gone unnoticed: Casa de Portugal received the Medal for Cultural Merit from the Macao government in 2011, while Amélia herself was distinguished with the Community Services Medal in 2013 and the Order of Merit from the Portuguese government the following year.

Manuela António

Catarina Brites Soares — Mon, 18 Nov 2019 16:53:41 +0800

Born in 1950 in Lisbon, Manuela António studied in Lisbon at Rainha Dona Leonor High School before going on to graduate in Law from the University of Coimbra. Law was already a strong possibility early in her academic career. “I was always a person of causes, and the law was a way to defend them,” she explains. Other careers that interested her, as a diplomat or commander of a ship, she was forced to exclude because, at the time, they were forbidden to women. “I fit more in the humanities and the possible choice for which I felt apt was right.” She chose Coimbra because it had a greater tradition in law. “I had the idea that taking the course in Coimbra would be a better choice than [University of] Lisbon. There was the idea that in Coimbra one experienced greater equality of treatment and people were more anonymous. Then it was an opportunity to leave home, which at the time was important,” she stresses. She was a classmate of Rui Rocha – writer and former IPOR director, also now based in Macao – and poet and journalist José Jorge Letria – one of the prominent figures in the fight against fascism in Portugal – who, she says, somehow influenced her politically despite most other classmates coming from pro-regime families. The leftward trend would come to light in college, the most politicised phase of her young life. “I was clearly from the left, but I stopped being so on 1 May 1974, when I began to see the left people chasing the right,” she explains, referring to the post-dictatorship period in Portugal after the April revolution in 1974. "I stopped believing in politics. I thought it was the same thing in reverse." Despite this shift in perspective, António joined the government the same year, coming on as a legal advisor in the Public Finance Department of the Ministry of Finance after graduating in 1973. Over the next few years she moved up within the ministry, representing the government in the boards of public companies (1975–78) then in international negotiations (1977–82), acting as advisor (1976) then Chief of Staff (1977–78) to the Finance Minister, before moving, in part, to the Treasury in 1979. There she served as legal advisor to the Secretary of State of the Treasury until 1982. A member of the Portuguese Law Society since 1975, António practiced law during her government service, working as a lawyer and consultant for Brisa Auto-Estradas de Portugal (1978–82) and Banco Borges & Irmão (1980–82). She also returned to education, completing a postgraduate degree in Economic Sciences at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon in 1979, where she also taught Public Finance, International Economic Law, Financing Law, Economics and Business Law. In 1982, with eight years of private and public experience under her belt, António relocated to Macao. “In Portugal, I was head of the minister's office, advisor to several secretaries, but was tired of so many useless meetings,” she recalls. Her male co-workers, on the other hand, were already starting to be noticed. “I thought coming to Asia could be a way to get away from the very politicised and aimless environment.” She began her work here in the Macao Finance Department, once again serving as a legal advisor, in addition to serving as magistrate of the Tax Enforcement Court and member of the supervisory committee of what is now the Monetary Authority of Macao. By 1984, she was appointed Chief of the Taxation and Excise Services. During this time, she also co-authored a book, “The State Business Sector in Portugal and the E.E.C. Countries,” on the history and evolution of the European Economic Community (EEC) and its relation and impact on Portugal. António guarantees that, despite her proximity to politicians, she has never harboured any political aspirations. “Completely out of the question. I was invited to CEO positions in Portugal which I refused, and in Macao I was invited by [then] Governor Almeida e Costa to be a lawmaker, but also refused.” She sees herself as ill-suited to politics – “It is not easy for me not to say what I think” – preferring instead to participate in shaping Macao as a citizen. After leaving government entirely in 1986, she established her own law firm, Manuela António – Lawyers and Notaries. Despite her many activities, she does not see herself as a workaholic. “I enjoy working as much as doing nothing. I am dependent on work in the sense that I could not be happy if I did not work,” she says.

A new beginning

Her arrival in Macao in 1982 was an adjustment. “Macao had 300,000 people. Although the Assembly had people who was better prepared in academic terms than it has today, it was not a large Assembly and nothing comparable to Portugal. It was all very different from a social, cultural and even food point of view: there was no cheese and there was only espresso coffee in two places. The biggest hotel of that time was the Old Lisboa.” By the end of the first year, António says, she already liked it. I saw Macao raise from a backwater town in the South China coast to become a nice and vibrant place birth as a territory.” Her law firm, founded in 1986, has been part of some of the main legal challenges that have taken place in Macao, such as the public tender for the granting of casino gambling concessions (acting on behalf of one of the competitors) in 2002, the entry into the securities markets (mainly Hong Kong and New York) of various companies operating in Macao through their subsidiaries, as well the establishment and steady progress of local financial institutions. It works with companies from Macao, mainland China and Australia, among others, with clients including HSBC, Hang Seng Bank, AXA Insurance, Melco Crown, Samsung Corporation, Four Seasons Hotels, Golden Crown, Chinese Estates, Burberry and Coach. Through it all, her character and personality earned her the nickname "Iron Lady," an image in which she recognises herself – to a point: “I'm a butter heart but I'm strong. Moreover, the opening of the office was an exercise in strength. I say what I think. I don't give up, but I'm very sensitive. I think it is enough for me to have a reputation that I no longer need to be tough,” she jokes. But there is more than the office: on vacation or business, António takes time every day for sport. For years she practiced gymnastics. Now she dedicates herself to the gym, but also enjoys walking, swimming and diving, as well as tennis. Her great passion, however, is on the other side of the globe in Los Angeles: her daughter. “Although I convinced her to do Management, with great sadness she said she wanted to go to US to study cinema in a city that I don't like at all and I have to visit from time to time,” she says between laughs. Today, nearly 40 years after she arrived in Macao, Manuela António feels a sense of belonging: “I already have a Chinese mentality.”

Calvin Chui

Macao News — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 14:57:02 +0800

It wasn’t until he was flipping the pages of a magazine at his family home in Macao, during high school holidays, that Calvin Chui started nurturing the idea of studying Law. A member of the influential Chui family in Macao, Calvin attended Pui Ching Middle School before leaving to the United States at the age of 14 to further his education.

Finding his path

In Moraga, a small town in San Francisco Bay Area, California, young Chui went to meet his older brother, whom was also studying there. “It was very natural for me to follow his steps. We both went to the same high school and we had a pretty good experience in there”, he recalls. Looking back, he admits, “it was a very young age to leave home”. Fortunately, he points out with a smile, both him and his brother “came out fine”. The son of an engineer and an accountant, Chui saw his brother becoming a Pediatric Doctor before turning to finance – he’s now completing his MBA at Tsinghua University. As for himself, basketball and computers were his first passions. “Studying Portuguese language was not an option in Pui Ching”, he recalls. So, how do Calving Chui ends up studying Law in Lisbon? “One thing that was always stuck in my mind was that my grandfather from my father side could speak Portuguese, and he had a very close relationship with the Portuguese community. From the three families in Macao, Ho-Ma-Chui, my grandfather was the one who could speak more Portuguese. From time to time we would go to Clube Militar or Restaurante Litoral”, he tells. In California, Chui took a Spanish language course while continuing to improve his computer skills. Later, during his 11th grade summer, he came back to visit Macao. Since Moraga is very close to Berkeley where my father got his degree and became a civil engineer, Chui’s my mind was set on the path of, ‘Berkeley, computer science’. It was only in that summer that Chui fatefully picked up a magazine in his home and read an article about Macanese students going to Portugal to study law, funded by a foundation. This got him thinking, “My father is an engineer, my mother is a registered accountant, and my brother was studying Medicine. It seems like all of us are doing different things, so maybe I should think of something else. None of us studied Law.” Upon asking for his parents’ opinions about him pursuing Law, they encouraged him to choose whatever he desired.

European adventure

The summer of 2009 was coming to an end when Chui first landed in Lisbon, which was also the first time he visited Europe. For one year, he studied Portuguese Language at University of Lisbon. One year later, he started his Law Degree at the Catholic University. “Before I arrived to Lisbon in 2009 I had never traveled to Europe. Lisbon was the capital of a European country. I was coming from around San Francisco, which wasn’t even the capital of California. So I thought ‘Lisbon should be amazing, like Paris or London’. But, when arrived, to the same airport as nowadays but way smaller, and with much worst surroundings, I thought ‘Wow, what have I got myself into?’” Chui remembers those times when he was browsing “an uncharted area, in terms of culture, language, and people”. Wanting to become a top professional, he started taking internships and other opportunities. In 2011, he took a summer internship at Macao’s firm Rato, Ling, Lei & Cortés-- where he currently still employed. One year later, he was a summer intern at PLMJ, one of the biggest law firms in Portugal. Finally, in 2014, Calvin Chui acted as a “Legal Clinic Intern” at the Corporate Finance team of the Tax Department of KPMG & Associates in Lisbon. “Once I realized I loved Law, I decided I’d either be a Law professor or a lawyer. Being a judge was never in my mind”, says Chui. Even after studying in Portugal, he felt there was something missing. He wanted to go to the United States again. Thus, he made a list of schools, the top 14 and some other schools that for consideration. In 2014, he packed up his life yet again and entered a Master of Laws at the University of Chicago Law School. Before returning to Macao, Calvin Chui took the New York State Bar exam, becoming also a registered attorney in the U.S.

Civil participation

Alongside his academic career, Chui developed signification associative activity. While studying in Portugal, he created the Luso-Macanese Students Association, that would later evolve into the Macau Youth Summit, an event happening for five years already, presided by Chui and bringing together hundreds of local young adults studying everywhere around the world. “The Macau Youth Summit was all about us wanting to contribute to Macao. But how do we do that? Through social participation, of course. But we didn’t know anything from Macao, we were so far away. We needed to equip ourselves with knowledge. We started liaising with other Macanese students associations, in UK, then later Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and United States. We all together thought that we needed to have an event for ourselves, which could provide us the information we need about our Macao. That’s how Macau Youth Summit came around, like a federation of people from different regions”, says Chui. Macau Youth Summit latest edition, sponsored by private entities, donations and funds from some of its associates, happened this year and brought more than 500 people to Macao. The project mission, Chui believes, is “to help Macao to evolve and improve”, and to make an impact on Macao influencers. “In the face of a great challenge, we can never say that we are 100 per cent prepared. But the art of achieving something is to take a leap of faith. It’s usually when we put ourselves in an uncomfortable zone that we’ll achieve something greater, so we are always trying new methods and ideas”, he adds. On a personal level, Chui aims to complete his trainee period at Rato, Ling, Lei & Cortés law firm and to become a licensed lawyer and the Macau Lawyers Association. Teaching Law is another path Chui sees himself taking on, having already received an invitation from City University of Macau. This ambitious young man aims to have more involvement in public affairs and summarizes his objectives with this sentence: “My goal is to have a memorable and successful adventure in my life”.

Carlos Simões

António Bilrero — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 10:42:18 +0800

More than 30 years later, he’s still unsure what exactly led him to study law. “I never had that vocational thing, that premature vocational call. I don’t remember going through that childhood thing where, at the age of seven or eight, they say ... ‘I want to be this or that when I’m older,'" he says. He, like many children, briefly dreamed of becoming an astronaut. “I thought that was really cool when I was a kid, but I gave up when I learned they ate through tubes.” His Spanish grandmother, on the other hand, dreamed of him becoming a bullfighter; most bulls used in Portuguese bullfighting come from the region where he lived, Ribatejo. To her, it seemed a natural fit but Simões never felt any connection to such things. “In the ninth year, in the early 1980s, I sat vocational tests and they pointed to two paths: agronomy or law. I went for law,” he recalls. “From an early age, I opted for advocacy. Nothing else appealed.” All these years later, Simões still nurtures a love of advocacy: “I could never see myself practising any other profession.” After graduating in 1991, he completed the first year of his internship in Portugal and the second year in Macao, where he’s practised ever since.

Working in Macao

Few would deny that engineers and architects have considerable influence on the culture of a city through the built environment, creating the physical structures that we interact with on a daily basis and subtly shaping how we move through the world, interact with others and with our environment. The law is a similar, if often far more invisible, factor in physically shaping a city, determining what can be built where and by whom. It also has the ability to break new ground, both literally and figuratively, with projects like One Central. "No one had ever done that in Macao. The residential, commercial valences, and the hotel part – all in one. This was a pioneering and innovative venture in Macao,” Simões reflects. “Later, the casinos arrived, as we know them now. I participated in all the legal solutions encountered and applied to that project… It was a very intense project that is still used and replicated today.” The casinos brought new opportunities and experience for Simões, enhancing his reputation in the process. Like all the lawyers who participated in the negotiations of concessions and sub-concessions, his experience working on the MGM sub-concession left its mark on him. "It was like the opening of the doors to a new world. At the time no one had an exact notion of the impact that it would have. These concessions were being negotiated and discussed on paper; it was all just being imagined,” he recalls. Years of negotiations passed, with new casinos moving in, and each day they went to work “as if we were organising an expedition to the moon. Nobody knew exactly where it was going to lead. And of course, all interpretations were possible. Perhaps some looked at the same contract, the same clauses, and saw radically different things.” When delving into the advocacy he currently practices, oriented to the law of transactional business, companies, real estate transactions, investments, funds, etc, Carlos Simões doesn’t hesitate in framing ‘the career.’ “My professional life has had several cycles. Because Macao is a small place, one ends up practicing a little of everything. No lawyer in Macao says, 'well, I arrived 20 years ago, I started doing this, and it’s still what I do today.' That never happens,” he explains. There was a period when he did a lot of litigation, and while he still finds himself in court today, it’s a venue that holds little allure. "In the case of transaction law, business, everyone has a common goal and, despite different pretensions, everything is working in a certain direction. In court, it’s not like that.” Court, he says, operates with each side working in opposing directions and the judge sits in the middle, moving things along but without a defined direction. While it can be “very interesting,” for Simões, litigation fails to offer the satisfaction of advocacy, of working in the same direction and “solving things” for his clients.

Roots in Portugal

His childhood in the small municipality of Torres Novas, however, couldn’t have been further from the glitz and glamour of Macao. “Everyone knows everyone. We grew up with our friends – parents are friends, the children are still friends. There is a greater solidarity in social relations and friendships.” While he continued to excel academically after the move to Lisbon (and professionally in Macao) he never again experienced the deep sense of community solidarity of his childhood. “In that sense, I have always continued to be a man from the countryside, very connected to those friendships and contacts.” It’s also where he developed his work ethic, taking on all manner of jobs when he was still a teenager. "My brother and I really enjoyed it: painting placards for my father, distributing advertising, etc.” “In the summer, I worked in a tomato factory. Then in university, I made money correcting and creating resources for the classifieds of the 12th grade. We were always like that. It’s what I remember most from those years: this entrepreneurial spirit that was greatly encouraged by my father.” Simōes recalls the easy adaptation when he left Torres Novas for cosmopolitan Lisbon to continue his studies, a transition eased by family. "I lived at my grandmother's house. I spent the week at my grandmother's and my aunt's house, who turned out to be a second mother to me.”

Planning for the future

For all his enthusiasm for work, Simões enjoys filling his free time with a variety of activities. "I run, cycle, play squash, go to the gym. My hobbies are to do a little sport. But never in a serious way.” He also loves reading, particularly historical novels, detective stories and travel books, which likely come in handy in one his favourite pastimes. Living in Asia is, for a Westerner, synonymous with travel most of the time and Simões doesn’t escape this rule: "I spend my life travelling.” Endlessly curious about how other people live, the story of a place, he prefers to seek out authentic experiences over recreating the comforts of home. “I never get tired of it.” The future, he insists, will involve a great deal more free time. "I'm not one of those people who say, 'I want to work until the end of my days'. I do not want to be like my father,” he remarks. His 87-year-old father still controls his business because “that's what animates him. That gives him a sense of well-being and control over his life.” At 50 years old, with his three children finishing their schooling within the next few years, Carlos Simões is looking toward a different future for himself. “I do not want to be in a situation where I need to work for a sense of well-being and a goal in life. I want to do other things.” None of his children – two sons and a daughter – are interested in pursuing advocacy like their father, and that’s fine with Simões. “Mentalities have changed a lot. I think that, in general, parents only look for what their children want,” he reflects. “Today, there is more freedom.”

Rui Cunha

Macao News — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 15:00:04 +0800

Rui Cunha is founder and senior partner at C&C Lawyers and chairman of the Rui Cunha Foundation. He is fluent in Portuguese and English and familiar with Spanish, French and basic Cantonese. Born 2 July 1941 in Mumbai, India to a Catholic family, originally from Portuguese India, Cunha grew up listening to fado, going to school and attending daily Mass. At home Portuguese was the mother language and it was also at home that he “received all the ingredients from the Portuguese culture and heritage.” After finishing his elementary education in Damão, he moved to Goa to attend high school, taking the opportunity to study Portuguese literature more in-depth. Before his father died in 1956 he told Cunha that he wanted him to follow the family tradition of working in law and so, in September 1958, he arrived at Lisbon University’s Law Faculty to begin his studies. By his own character, Cunha became fully engaged and dedicated to completing his law degree, although he wasn’t clear whether he would opt for a future as a conservative magistrate or liberal lawyer. While at university, Cunha’s life was turned upside down when the annexation of Goa, Damão and Diu by the Indian Union took place in December 1961. Suddenly he was unable to receive support from his family and had to fend for himself financially. He took an office job at the Social Security Service in mid-1962, here he was confined to a dimly lit room for hours, writing records into a huge book. In the third year of his studies Cunha faced another blow. Throwing himself into his studies, and his new passion of badminton, after a time Cunha became unwell and was diagnosed with liquid in the lungs. His life was put on hold while he recuperated, and when finally fit and well, he had to restart his third academic year after losing 1 year of academic study. When back to full health, Cunha took up a new hobby and enrolled in a photography and filming course, an area he had always found intriguing. In need of more money to support his studies, he found a job as a production director’s assistant at the Portuguese TV station Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP). Television occupied his nights, law studies his days. "It went from a simple occupation gradually to a serious passion, but I continued to study until, at the start of the fifth year of law, a new crossroad entered my life,” he notes. Cunha’s professionalism was so respected that he was offered a scholarship from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to finish his media course in Paris, yet he opted to stay at university. It was a difficult choice to make: giving up his passion in favour of a stable future career. Upon completing his law degree in 1964 Cunha then ran for magistracy in Portugal and became deputy to the Prosecutor in Boa Hora, a criminal court in Lisbon. "I discovered a world completely different from the one learned at university, and a passion for life in the courts,” he enthuses. Following his father’s wishes, Cunha worked towards becoming a judge. He first took a prosecutor job for six years in the local courts. He then opted for a career in the Portuguese then colonies, working in Mozambique as a public prosecutor and then becoming prosecutor for the entire East Timor colony in 1969. It was here that he married his Portuguese wife, Ana Maria Bravo, with whom he would have two children. It was also in East Timor that Cunha applied to become a judge, ranking first place in all the overseas candidates for the Portuguese colonies. He was free to choose where he wanted to work and opted for Angola, Moçâmedes; a city bordering Namibia. He became a judge here in March 1971, working for two years before moving to a criminal Court in the country’s capital, Luanda, to replace a "brilliant magistrate, Dr Rodrigo Leal de Carvalho, well known in Macao.” Cunha was a judge in the Angolan capital until the country's independence, and would have stayed if it was not for one day in July 1975, while dining with his family, that a grenade fell just 50 meters from his house. The next day the family packed and returned to the safety of Portugal. Cunha’s career continued to go from strength-to-strength in Portugal, but he began to feel restless and dissatisfied with his work. A chance encounter with an old friend from East Timor led to a new opportunity, when two days later, Cunha was sleeping soundly when, at four in the morning, the telephone rang. Before long he realised he was talking to business magnate Stanley Ho. A few months later, at the age of 40, Cunha was on a plane to Macao to start a new era of his life working as a legal advisor for Stanley Ho, who until 2002, was the sole operator of Macao’s casinos. Registering as a lawyer in Macao, Cunha worked as Ho’s legal advisor for 29 years, helping to manage his business empire in Macao both within and outside the gaming sector. At first working alone, Cunha gradually recruited more lawyers in Portugal to cope with the speed of Macao’s development. In 1996, Cunha merged with another law firm, setting up a new company with Dr. António Correia called C&C Lawyers. Correia often returned to Portugal and so Cunha led the Macao office, also taking on the role of director for several firms in both Macao and Portugal. All the while C&C continued to grow, and today is known as one of the territory’s leading law firms – soon to be integrated into a network of international law firms to serve both Lusophone interests as well as the relationship of Portuguese speaking countries with China. Most recently, in 2012 Cunha created the Rui Cunha Foundation endowed with MOP 50 million, a non-profit organisation with the goal of promoting Macao’s legal system and to support philanthropic endeavours. Well-known in Macao, the foundation has regularly contributed to cultural and creative activities in the region. “I see it as a simple way to give back to the society, in return for what Macao has given my life and career,” he notes.

Miguel de Senna Fernandes

Macao News — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 20:05:54 +0800

Henrique Miguel Rodrigues de Senna Fernandes is a Macanese lawyer, playwright, and theatre director. He was born in Macao on 10 May 1961: his mother is Chinese and his father is renowned Macanese writer Henrique de Senna Fernandes. He speaks fluent Portuguese, Cantonese and English but regrets not learning Latin. Fernandes grew up in Macao and attended the former Infante D. Henrique High School. Spending his childhood in the region, he recalls, was “awesome” but “messy”. At the time, Macao was dealing with gang violence that permeated the schools. “Some teenagers would invoke gang names and things got rough sometimes,” Fernandes admits. Upon graduating in 1988 with a degree in law from Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon, Fernandes contemplated staying in Portugal, but his father advised him to return to his motherland and join the family practice. “At that time, things were much simpler. One was not required to do an internship before practising [law].” Thus the summer of 1989 marked the commencement of Fernandes’s professional life as a practising lawyer, a career he’s been dedicated to ever since. As a fledgling lawyer, Fernandes believed that getting to know the people with whom he worked and familiarising himself with previous case studies would greatly help him in his profession. “What I wanted, as a very shy lawyer, was to get to know people first. I seized the opportunity to start really early at the office and deliver requirements to the public notary, registry offices, courts and other places to get to know them.” He also studied old case files, sifting through the court’s archives. “I went there on Saturdays and sat down reading case files of older lawyers, some of them still practising.” Originally specialising in criminal law, Fernandes quickly switched to civil. “I got bored of it because I felt the space given to a lawyer in [the field of criminal law] is not as substantial as in civil, where lawyers partake in finding evidence, etc.” In addition to practicing law, Fernandes has been a registered notary public since 1995. He ran for lawmaker of the Macao legislative assembly elections in 1992, but did not secure a chair in the hemicycle. He was later appointed legislative assembly lawmaker by Macao’s former Governor Vasco Rocha Vieira from 1997 to 1999. Fernandes admits he did not enjoy his time in politics. “I did not like my experience as a lawmaker that much. I think I would never make a good politician; I would say too much.” He is the longest-standing member of the Macao SAR Government Consumer Council still on active duty. The Macanese Association, a local organisation advocating Macanese identity, which he chairs, also plays a role in his life, as he believes “it is important to represent the Macanese cultural identity.” In 2015, he took over the presidency of the Association for Macanese Education (APIM). Fernandes is also quite active in the theatre and is playwright and director of Dóci Papiaçam di Macau, a local group, which performs its plays solely in Macanese Patuá, a Portuguese-based creole that has fallen into disuse. His journey into the theatre began in 1993, following the passing of José ‘Adé’ dos Santos Ferreira, the last poet of distinction to write in Patuá. “It all started with my father wanting to write a play for [Doci] to perform after [Adé’s] passing, and he asked me to join him.” Fernandes recalls the first time he ever heard Patuá: “I was about seven years old when I heard my [paternal] grandmother telling something in a language I couldn’t understand to a group of [her] friends and seeing them laugh a lot. I got curious, later asking her about it, to which she replied, ‘You should speak Portuguese at home’.” His first script—Olâ Pisidénte (See the President)—debúted in 1993, intentionally coinciding with three other local events: former Portuguese President Mário Soares’s visit to Macao, the reopening of the Dom Pedro V Theatre, and the first gathering of the Macanese Association. Fernandes has been writing scripts for Dóci Papiaçam di Macau’s/ Dom Pedro V Theatre’s/the Macanese Association’s annual show ever since. Fernandes hopes to publish his scripts for Dóci in print one day. The self-taught playwright, who occasionally takes on acting roles, wishes he had an artistic education in theatre but instead devotes time and effort to studying the discipline. He describes Doci as “organised chaos”, but believes the group also shoulders “a lot of responsibility”, especially with the passing of Ferreira. “I started reading Adé’s books when I was 12 years old, and although I did not understand them, I already had the notion of culture, that Patuá is truly ours.” As if his dedication to the law and theatre wasn’t enough, Fernandes has a new source of delight: creating music on digital platforms. “My phone is my accessory with which I record sounds to later process on the computer.” Photography is yet another passion: “I really enjoy shooting portraits. I believe everyone has a natural beauty,” says the lawyer/artist. Unfortunately, he has not found the time to devote to this hobby. Writing, he underlines, will always be his life’s artistic constant. Along with his scripts, Fernandes intends to publish some short stories.