Kinmen County residents yesterday voted against legalizing gambling in the outlying county.
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.”
Photo: Wu Cheng-ting, Taipei Times
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
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
South Korea has adjusted its electronic arrival card system to no longer list Taiwan as a part of China, a move that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said would help facilitate exchanges between the two sides. South Korea previously listed “Taiwan” as “Taiwan (China)” in the drop-down menus of its online arrival card system, where people had to fill out where they came from and their next destination. The ministry had requested South Korea make a revision and said it would change South Korea’s name on Taiwan’s online immigration system from “Republic of Korea” to “Korea (South),” should the issue not be
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
AIR ALERT: China’s reservation of airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea could be an attempt to test the US’ response ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting, the NSB head said China’s attempts to infiltrate Taiwan are systematic, planned and targeted, with activity shifting from recruiting mid-level military officers to rank-and-file enlisted personnel, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) integrates national security, intelligence operations and “united front” efforts into a dense network to conduct intelligence gathering and espionage in Taiwan, Tsai said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. It uses specific networks to screen targets through exchange activities and recruiting local collaborators to establish intelligence-gathering organizations, he said. China is also shifting who it targets to lower-ranking military personnel,
RSS