Like Prince Gautama Buddha, an ascetic and sage, and on whose teachings Buddhism was founded, local lawmaker-cum-unionist Jose Maria Pereira Coutinho also comes from the Kshatriyas, or the Warrior Class. Traditionally, Kshatriyas constituted the ruling and military elite in India. Their role was to protect society by fighting in war time and governing in peace time.

Pereira Coutinho’s parents, the late police chief Basilio Cancio Coutinho and his wife Maria Ida Lourdina Julieta Pereira Coutinho, after their marriage in the former Portuguese colony of Goa, India, moved to Macau. Their first son, Jose Maria was born here on July 22, 1957.

A man born in China and who has lived for 60 years of his life on Chinese soil, nourished with Chinese food and drinking water from several Chinese springs and proficient in the Chinese language, Pereira Coutinho is as good as a baptised Chinese, with Chinese culture absorbed by his body, mind and spirit.

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