American-style mobsters or perhaps their Asian ‘clones’ should just think of giving Singapore a miss when it opens its first casino in December.

The puritanical city-state has made it plain it will neither brook illegal activities nor watch passively what has traditionally followed in the footsteps of institutionalised casino operations stretching from the US to Macau and Australia.

casino The choice of lifting a 40-year ban on institutionalised gambling in 2005 was as monumental, given the very conservative ideological leanings of the Peoples’ Action Party in ruling Singapore.

Not since the debate about homosexuals in the civil service or the armed forces a few years ago; has Singapore been convulsed by an issue running against the grain of what it has always espoused, in its quest to ‘level up’ to its peers of Hong Kong, Taiwan in global attractiveness.

The debate, which the nation’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew once encapsulated as being between the “moralists and pragmatists in his cabinet”, has now morphed into finding a right balance between both counterpoises.

To ensure the nation does not veer too far to the left, the careful choice of lexicon was as much about minding frayed sensibilities as it was about accomplishing the economic imperative of generating the 10-15 percent contribution to the national kitty that a casino holding is reputed to bring.

However, the politics of economic realism leave much to be desired in terms of the social implications.

lee kuan yew Lee (left) who once termed the Chinese as “such congenital gamblers’ has always been mindful of even the remotest danger that unlicensed gambling represents. He was mortified personally, by his one-time gambling father, as told in his memoir.

The Home Affairs Ministry has begun considering plans to criminalise borrowing from loan sharks.

Interestingly, the proposal coincided with pre-emptive plans to institute the Casino Regulatory Authority (CRA) whose aim is to combat casino ‘inflicted’ crimes like prostitution, cheating and illegal money lending.

"As a new casino jurisdiction, organised crime groups may view Singapore as an easy target," Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng cautioned.

So, to ensure the operational efficacy of the CRA, enforcement agencies will work closely with the newly-instituted body.

More measures in mind

The measures do not just stop there. Plans are also afoot to get closer to the casino’s nerve centres by installing CRA satellites within casinos, and conducting random checks on employees and junket operators. An anti-money laundering regime is mandatory for casino operators.

Even greater bite is slated in an ostensible bid to distinguish Singapore’s brand of gambling with the rest of the region or even the world.

gambling gamble 220207 Call it ‘responsible’ gambling, with preliminary measures enunciated by former judge and current CRA chairperson Richard Magnus to usher in adequate cooperation between government agencies to avoid all the vices associated with gambling.

A special police force unit named the Casino Investigation Branch is also to be inaugurated.

All these - and we can certainly expect a lot more measures - are meant to ensure a fine balance among varying dichotomies in Singaporean society, represented by women’s group ‘Aware’ for family cohesiveness, or Malay Muslims whose religious injunctions forbid gambling.

But these murmurings do not denote anything as significant as the great leap into gambling now highlights.

In 2005, Eng Lock Tan a founder-member in Families Against the Casino Threat in Singapore whilst submitting a 19,000 signature petition against institutionalised gambling said, “Somewhere we need to draw a line (as) a casino is a big symbol of gambling.”

That line is much about what constitutes the delicate balance between social harmony and fulfilling the nation’s economic aims.

The big question, though, is this: what if all the pre-emptive measures fail?

FRANCIS XAVIER is a freelance writer based in Singapore