Fernando Chui will be re-elected Macau's leader but faces growing gripes

Four hundred social and business leaders in Macau are preparing to elect the city's next leader at the end of this month. Meanwhile, young democracy activists have spent every day of the past few weeks on Macau's streets, enduring gruelling heat and pouring rain, to urge fellow residents to take part in an unofficial democracy referendum.

The exercise, organised by three local pro-democracy groups, offers hundreds of thousands of citizens in the former Portuguese enclave who cannot vote an opportunity to have their say about the political system and the next chief executive.

Not that there's any mystery as to who will win. Dr Fernando Chui Sai-on took the chief executive's office uncontested in 2009, and he is running unchallenged again.

Chui is expected to be re-elected easily - even though he sits in a more precarious position than when he took office five years ago.

In May, the 57-year-old former secretary for social affairs and culture survived the biggest blow to his political career. Belying the long-held view that Macau's people are apolitical, about 20,000 citizens protested in what was described as Macau's biggest rally since its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1999, opposing a bill proposed by Chui to give lavish retirement packages to outgoing chief executives and ministers.

Critics have also blamed Chui for failing to control housing prices, forcing many couples to delay marriage plans until they can afford humble flats.