dry grass singing

the inevitable post on the Casino Issue

Once in a while, something happens on this small island to galvanise the normally passive islanders into passionate action – or at least voluble speech. Several years ago, this took the form of the Hello Kitty Issue – concerned Singaporeans all over the world joining in the chorus to lament the poor state of manners and civility shown by the barbaric behaviour of certain native islanders as they fought, literally, over the Hello Kitty soft toys distributed as free gifts by a certain fast food chain as part of a promotional campaign. This time round, the hot-potato is the far less frivolous issue of the proposed opening of not just one, but two, casinos in our hitherto cloistered city-state. After almost half a year of vigorous public debate that saw Singaporeans sharply divided along the lines of liberal and conservative, pro and anti-casino, the decision was finally announced in favour of the 35 000 new jobs the euphemistically-named ‘integrated resorts’ would generate for the economy. All this, amidst much public weeping and gnashing of teeth as ministers (both political and religious), gamblers and ex-gamblers, aunties and uncles, Singaporeans here and away – in short, the whole spectrum of Singaporean society – pitched in with their two cents’ worth of heartfelt discourse. It was, in short, nothing short of truly amazing.

It was also a revealing, and frightening, example of the way Singaporeans have made a habit of expecting to have their cake and eat it, too. Frightening, because this surely is a case of hubris on a grand, nation-wide scale. Yes, we are the little red dot that could. We are the economic miracle that took place while the rest of the world was looking elsewhere, not even thinking about us enough to expect that we would do anything less than screw it all up and whimper, tail between legs, off the world-stage. We have, to date, managed to balance the difficult demands of being a cosmopolitan city-state while maintaining a (some say excessively) strict hold on public morality. We have done all this, and more – perhaps too much more. Yet to think that we can, once again, pull off the knives-through-the-box-with-the-bimbo-inside trick, is perhaps to take our belief in the miracle of self-determination just a wee bit too far.

I might as well declare my allegiance now for the blur of mind who have not already guessed my stand on the issue. I was, and still am, firmly against the setting up of a casino (or two, or three…) in Singapore. Unusual, I know, for me to take such a strong position on an issue that impinges on the right of the individual to make his own decisions and to take personal responsibility for the consequences of those decisions. I suppose this is an example of how, in the battle between abstract theory and personal experience, the latter has always carried far more weight for me than the former ever could. And my (vicarious) personal experience has shown me how gambling addiction can tear lives asunder and leave them broken and almost beyond repair. I have seen entire extended families divided by conflicts over how to deal with a family member who is a gambling addict. I have seen people suffering – financially, emotionally – because a loved one who is a gambler insists on sponging off their goodwill and charity by borrowing money and chalking up huge debts that he cannot possibly hope to repay. And to top it all off, these people almost invariable come from the lower strata of society. The ones who suffer most are the ones without the financial and social resources needed to extricate themselves from the mess that they land in as a result of their failure to control their gambling habit.

Of course, not everyone who gambles becomes an addict. That would be a gross over-generalisation of the sort that upsets me so much when I hear it coming from other people. In fact, I am open to the possibility that most people who gamble do not become addicts. (I have a friend, for example, who sets aside a fixed budget for jackpot-gaming every month. As far as I know, he has kept to this budget, which he sees as the price he pays for the entertainment derived from his regular encounters with the one-armed bandit.) What I am concerned about, though, is that the people who do become addicted to gambling are the ones who are likely to have the least ability to seek and effect a cure. They are likely to be the people on the lower end of the economic scale. They are the ah peks and ah mahs, ah cheks and ah sohs who people our heartlands, the ones for whom the boom of the new economy spells not excitement and new hope, but possible unemployment and despair. The ones who need excitement and hope, however meager or fleeting – and who seek it in pastimes like buying 4D and Toto, or horseracing. Yes, I know I am generalizing, but these stereotypes exist for a reason. And I have seen them, spoken to them, lived through family quarrels over what to do with them, so that for me, they are real people, not mere cardboard bogeymen set up by moralists with nothing better to do with their time.

As one of the people who objected to the setting up of a casino here, I find particularly objectionable the idea that it is now my responsibility (together with religious organizations, social service organizations, and other groups who were opposed to the casino) to help protect Singaporeans from the pernicious effects of something that we did not want to take place in the first instance. So this is now my problem? How’s that for passing the buck?

The government has assured us, time after time, that measures will be put in place to protect Singaporeans from the pernicious effects of our own greed and lack of self-control. All thanks for this thoughtfulness, I say – but why should we protect just Singaporeans? Do the tourists whom we expect to form the bulk of the visitors to the casinos deserve any less protection? Is it right for us to think only of our own in this matter? What kind of nation are we becoming, to work into policy laws and regulations that will benefit our own citizens at the expense of others?

But my objection is not just based on moral grounds. I find the manner in which the debate has been couched in terms of economics versus ethics highly dubious. Even if we accept the argument that in this case, our economic survival has to take precedence over the maintenance of our (admittedly rather clinical) ethical environment, it remains to be seen if the integrated resorts will indeed become the cash cows that we so fervently believe they will become. With such a small local population, the IRs (as they are now called) will have to depend on a steady influx of tourists who will find, once they come here, much of the same sorts of amenities that can be found in any other first world city. That should take care of the visitors from first world countries – why come here when they have the whole of Europe and America at their doorsteps? What can we offer that will distinguish ourselves from our older, more established first-world cousins? As for our neighbours from the region – what can we offer that cities such as Hong Kong and Shanghai cannot? Why would, for example, our neighbours from up north want to visit our IRs when they have their own well-established casinos in their own country?

It just seems to me that the decision on the integrated resorts was made in the absence of any more creative or interesting ideas on how we can maintain our global competitiveness in the years ahead. It bespeaks a serious lack of imagination on the part of the decision-makers, and sends a rather desperate smoke-signal to our competitors that says, “Hey, we’re really at our wits’ end here and we cannot see any other way out of our present situation. So we’re going to follow the business model that other countries have used successfully in the past, even if it isn’t particularly exciting or novel, and in the meantime let us pray and hope that this all works out.” Not a particularly inspiring solution to the problem, I must say.

Finally, I find the argument that opening two casinos in Singapore will help build our reputation as a ‘funky’, ‘happening’ and attractive place to live particularly fatuous. Funkiness is not predicated on the presence, or absence, of roulette tables and jackpot machines – nor is it necessarily dependant on whether or not people are allowed to choose to get their kicks from the thrill of gambling. Funkiness is an attitude – a state of mind and a way of life that means, among other things, people having the freedom to pursue the things they feel passionate about, and having the imagination to dream big dreams and the daring to make those dreams come true. There are many ways we can help make Singapore a funky place to live, and while the setting up of two casinos may signal a relaxation of the rigid moral codes that characterized the Singapore of the past, it does not in any way show that Singaporeans have become more passionate, imaginative, or daring. In fact, if anything, it shows that we are a country that has run out of fresh ideas, and that has to resort (pun not intentional) to building the kind of glitzy, high-cost international resorts that virtually every other developed country already has in order to stay abreast of the competition.

Nor is the casino decision likely to make the idea of living in Singapore any more attractive for the ‘foreign talent’ we are trying to woo. In what way will the integrated resorts contribute to making Singapore a creative, intelligent, compassionate and humane society that creative and intelligent people will want to call home? To what extent will the integrated resorts provide these people with the intellectual stimulation and the variety of lifestyle, entertainment and leisure options that they value?

All these questions remain to be answered. For the moment, it seems only wise that we work our damnedest at making sure the integrated resorts succeed in the economic sense, and that we continue our efforts to ‘remake’ Singapore into a society that truly values people as people, not as mere units of production. And in the meantime, let us pray very very hard that we will not live to regret our decision on the Casino Issue, and that the integrated resorts will not be the harbingers of destruction that so many people fear they will be, either to our society as a whole, or to the individuals who make up that society.

posted by eothen @ 8:40 PM