While the Prime Minister of Singapore tries to enable his country to get on a competitive footing for the next twenty years, by authorizing the opening of two casinos in his country within the framework of the future of the tourist industry (in the understanding that this industry is replacing the manufacturing industry as a labour intensive employer) Mexico’s legislators and business class get embroiled in a soap opera saga as each ‘caudillo’ fights for the interests of his own corner.

As has been widely reported, Singapore expects foreign investment in the region of US$3 billion, with the ensuing creation of some 40,000 jobs in the two projected casino complexes. This will enable the country to compete with other countries in the region for the lucrative casino, convention, entertainment and leisure business that is benefiting locations such as Macau.

Meanwhile back at the ‘rancho’, in the microcosm of the National Council of Tourist Enterprises, better known as CNET, two sides have emerged from within the ranks of this august Mexican body, defending their own interests tooth and nail. In one corner defending age old privileges are the hoteliers called “The Wealthy Ones” and led by the president of that organization ‘El Gringo’ Gordon Viberg, from the Presidente Hotel group. On the other side are all the other members of CNET, called simply “The Majority”.

It is well documented that ‘el gringo’ Viberg is virulently opposed to the opening of casinos, knowing full well that there are some 1,500 illegal gambling joints in the country, and that he has tried to derail the efforts of Mexican legislators to approve the new gaming law, which would include casino licensing, by insisting on the elaboration of studies and investigations on the effects of casino gambling, et al.

Mexican Hoteliers are aware that with new casino legislation, foreign casino resort groups with a different vision of the hospitality sector would invest in the country, severely affecting local hoteliers and their old fashioned systems, and have closed ranks in opposing casinos in the country. “The Majority” group is formed by tourist operators, restaurateurs, and other businesses and personalities associated with the tourist industry, who see the need for regulated casinos as a means of attracting investment and creating jobs.

Last Wednesday, “The Wealthy Ones” won a small victory when the Tourist Commission in the Lower House failed to meet in the scheduled session to discuss and possibly approve the gaming legislation project. The president of the Commission, Francisco Lopez Mena from PAN, the party in government, expressed doubts that the gaming legislation would be approved during the current parliamentary session, which ends on April 30.

Stating the obvious, Representative Lopez Mena said that the legal project could not advance if there was no meeting. The fact is that even in the event that the legislation was approved, casinos would only be licensed to open from 2009 onwards. In other words, right now the Mexican gaming legislation remains within the business and political arena.

Worse was to come in this enduring saga, when Lopez Mena announced that three people interested in investing in casinos in the City of Monterrey had been murdered. He added that in view of that it was necessary to regulate the gaming and betting business, which is in a state of anarchy because the 1947 law is obsolete, and that the government is seeking to control the sector any which-way by means of new legislation, but that they had not got there, yet. It was a matter of adding insult to injury, and turning the soap opera into major drama.

There is no way a country should allow deliberations on the establishment of a legal framework for casinos to be a matter of assassination - or of Bhudist monks’ immolations such as the reported threats in Thailand - as both create an aura of social trauma. Each country has its own idiosyncracies, but one did have the perception that Mexico had lost the drunken pistol-wielding ‘charro’ of the 1940s saloons when casinos were outlawed in the country.

In the old Mexican soap operas, they used to say that “The Wealthy Ones” owned the country, while “The Majority” owned the truth. If Mexico wishes to leave behind its backward image, its politicians should learn from the Singapore decision and embrace the future with modern gaming legislation.
(E-04.22.05)

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