The Electoral Affairs Commission for the Legislative Assembly Election has decided to provide a total of 19 venues for election teams to conduct electioneering events, compared to the 17 venues used in the 2013 election.

The two new venues were Sai Van Lake Square and Carmo's Fair, the Commission’s Chairman, Mr Tong Hio Fong, told reporters after today’s Commission meeting.

Of the 19 electioneering venues available in the official run up to this year’s election on 17 September, a total of 13 are on Macao peninsula; five are in Taipa and one is in Coloane.

Mr Tong additionally said the Commission had approved – as of today – six applications for nomination committee legal status, from 21 applications submitted so far.

The Commission had also received applications for legal status from two election teams wishing to contest the indirect election, he added.

Applications for nomination committees for the 2017 election will close on 20 June.

The Commission had so far identified 92 individuals that had signed nomination papers for more than one nomination committee. The Secretariat of the Commission had met a dozen or so of those identified, to understand in each case the reason for a duplication of signature. In those instances, the Commission would amend the records to allocate a single nomination signature to a single election team according to the nominator’s preference.

Mr Tong additionally said the Commission had been paying close attention to the issue of alleged promotion of candidacy prior to a permitted electioneering period. The updated Legislative Assembly Election Law had introduced a new definition of campaign promotion and only promotion efforts made in the period between the release of the general list of accepted teams and the start of the permitted electioneering period were prohibited by law, he added.

The Commission Against Corruption had so far received 16 election-linked complaints and had initiated an investigation in each instance, Mr Tong stated.