Plans for one or more casino resorts on Taiwan’s outlying islands appear to be further away than ever. The reason is a sharp drop in voter support for the pro-casino ruling KMT Nationalist Party in recent local elections.
President Ma Ying-jeou, a proponent of closer ties with China as well as of the gaming project, has ordered a review of local poll results that saw his personal approval ratings also fall.
Popular opinion on casinos is divided in Taiwan, and President Ma may well be tempted to avoid pushing through a policy that could lose him even more votes in swing constituencies in the next scheduled general election in 2012.
The waters are further muddied because the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is expected to fight the 2012 poll on a platform supporting formal independence from Mainland China—something that’s never happened before, despite 60 years of political separation. The DPP is also much more lukewarm on legalising gaming than the KMT. But even if the DPP did support the casino scheme, declaring unilateral independence is likely to bring a new freeze in relations with Beijing and kill off the potential feeder market for the gaming resorts.
The window of opportunity for the casino scheme was probably in the first two years of President Ma’s administration, when his popular mandate and parliamentary majority seemed unassailable. But two unsuccessful plebiscites in the frontrunner location Penghu (one poll with insufficient voter turnout and the other an outright voter rejection of the idea) have lost valuable time. Kinmen, only a few kilometres from the Mainland, seems much more keen to get involved, but may not now get the chance.
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