Election of Macao's next chief executive will be held on August 29, said the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) government Monday in a gazette.

The gazette, endorsed by incumbent Chief Executive Edmund Ho Hau Wah set the date for the election based on the related articles of the Macao Basic Law. The next chief executive will be elected through "one person one vote" by a 300-member broadly representative Election Committee.

Currently, only the professional sector, which holds 30 seats in the Election Committee, has two more candidacy than the number of seats. The other 270 members with the committee have been produced through nomination by over 400 elective societies.

An election of 30 members in the professional sector of the committee was held Sunday. Among 442 qualified voters from 45 elective societies in the professional sector, 393 people, or 88.91 percent of the voters, executed their right to vote from 32 candidates running for the seats. This is the first time that a public election was held in the process of Macao's chief executive election.

Under Macao's Chief Executive Election Law, which was passed by the Macao Legislative Council in April, the election of the chief executive must be held at least 60 days before the office holder's term expires. The incumbent chief executive Edmund Ho Hau Wah's five-year term will expire on Dec. 19 this year.

(Xinhua News Agency June 29, 2004)