《TAIPEI TIMES》 Kinmen nixes casino development

By Wu Cheng-ting and Liu Li-jen / Staff reporters, with CNA

Kinmen County residents yesterday voted against legalizing gambling in the outlying county.

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The referendum question, formulated by Chinese Nationalist Party （KMT） Kinmen County Councilor Tsai Chun-sheng （蔡春生）, asked Kinmen residents whether they supported establishing an “international holiday resort complex” with 5 percent of its space designated for gambling.

Results released by the Kinmen County Election Commission at about 6pm yesterday showed that turnout was 24.17 percent among 114,426 eligible voters, with 24,368, or 90.01 percent, voting “No,” and 2,705, or 9.99 percent, voting “Yes.”

The polls were open from 8am until 4pm.

An additional 589 null votes were also cast, the commission said.

Kinmen County Commissioner Chen Fu-hai （陳福海） and KMT Legislator Yang Chen-wu （楊鎮浯）, whose constituency is in Kinmen, both cast a “No” vote.

Speaking to reporters after casting his ballot, Chen said that the question of whether to build casinos in Kinmen showed that the county’s growth had reached a bottleneck.

He called on governments on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to place more emphasis on Kinmen’s development.

“Gambling is not the only option for Kinmen,” he said, adding that the county, as the nation’s outpost, has an abundance of relics dating back to the Chinese Civil War and traditional Minnan-style buildings and rustic attractions.

Yang said he was “glad” about the outcome, which demonstrated the residents’ “collective wisdom.”

“It showed that Kinmen folks were thinking about development in the long term, instead of being shortsighted and allowing themselves to be lured by profits close at hand,” Yang said.

Alliance Against the Legalization of Gambling executive director Ho Tsung-hsun （何宗勳） said that there were three contributing factors to the outcome.

First, civic awareness in Kinmen has grown in recent years and many residents that are not members of groups opposed to gambling have been campaigning against casinos by making and distributing promotional tools, Ho said.

Second, Kinmen’s demography is mostly comprised of civil servants, giving it a more conservative social setting that is unfavorable to gambling, he said.

China, which has been unequivocal in opposing gambling, also played a role in the outcome, he said.

The Xiamen Daily on the eve of the referendum published an opinion piece by the Chinese government criticizing gambling, which could have had an effect on voters, he said.

In addition, many young Kinmen residents are worried about casinos driving up house prices, Ho said.

The referendum outcome indicates that neither the pan-green nor the pan-blue camp welcomes gambling, Ho said, calling on the Democratic Progressive Party administration to abolish Article 10-2 of the Offshore Islands Development Act （離島建設條例）, which governs the establishment of casinos, to free outlying islands from the “threat” of such referendums.

Additional reporting by Sean Lin

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES