Anabela Fátima Xavier Sales Ritchie ( zh, 林綺濤; born May 25, 1949) is a politician from

Macau Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...

. She served as president of the

Legislative Assembly of Macau The Legislative Assembly of the Macau Special Administrative Region is the organ of the legislative branch of Macau. It is a 33-member body comprising 14 directly elected members, 12 indirectly elected members representing Functional constitu ...

, the first woman to hold the position. Ritchie was born in Macau to a family with both Chinese and Portuguese ancestry; both of her grandmothers were full-blooded Chinese. Her parents, both Macanese, were civil servants. She gained a master's degree in Germanic

philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

from the

University of Lisbon The University of Lisbon (ULisboa; ) is a public university, public research university in Lisbon, and Portugal's largest university. It was founded in 1911, but the university's present structure dates to the 2013 merger of the former Universit ...

in 1971, following it with a diploma in pedagogic sciences from the same institution. She taught in Lisbon from 1971 until 1974 before returning to Macau, where she continued teaching from 1975 until 1986. In that year she was appointed to a seat on the Legislative Assembly, of which she served as vice-president. In 1992 Carlos Augusto Corrêa Paes D'Assumpção, then serving as president of the Assembly, died suddenly, and Ritchie was elected to succeed him. She served in the post until the

handover of Macau The handover of Macau from the Portuguese Republic to the People's Republic of China was at midnight on 20 December 1999. This event ended 442 years of Portuguese rule in the former settlement, which began in 1557. Macau was settled by Por ...

to China in 1999, when she was required to relinquish the position because she opted to keep her Portuguese nationality. She was succeeded by

Susana Chou Susana Chou Vaz da Luz (born 2 December 1941), also known as Chou Kei Jan and Cao Qizhen, is a Macau politician who served as the president of the Legislative Assembly of Macau from 1999 to 2009. Biography Chou's ancestral hometown is the cur ...

as president, but remained a member of the Assembly until 2001, serving six terms in total. During her career in the Assembly, Ritchie was often accused of being too pro-Chinese in her outlook. Since the end of her political career she has remained involved in local affairs, acting as a member of the University Council of the

University of Macau The University of Macau (UM or UMAC) is a public comprehensive research university in Macau. The university campus is located in Hengqin, Hengqin Island, Zhuhai, Guangdong, on a piece of land leased to and under the jurisdiction of the Governmen ...

a member of the Curators Council of the Macau Foundation, a member of the Consultative Commission for Women's Affairs and a member of the Judiciary Magistrates Council.Despacho do Chefe do Executivo n.º 123/2012
/ref> She is a supporter of the

Macau Basic Law The Basic Law of the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( zh, 中華人民共和國澳門特別行政區基本法, ) is the organic law that establishes the Macau Special Administrative Region, replacing the ...

, passed while she was a member of the Assembly. Ritchie is married to prominent Macanese doctor Alfredo Maria Sales Ritchie and have two children. Amongst them, Andre Duarte Xavier Sales Ritchie gained notoriety during his spell in charge of the high-profile

Macau Light Rapid Transit The Macau Light Rapid Transit (MLRT, zh, 澳門輕軌系統; , MLM) is a mass transit system in Macau and the first railway system of the city. The first phase of the project's construction began in February 2012, and the first section of the Taip ...

project.

References

1949 births Living people Macau women in politics Members of the Legislative Assembly of Macau Macanese people University of Lisbon alumni 20th-century women politicians 21st-century women politicians {{Macau-bio-stub