With the Abe government suddenly reeling from two high-profile cabinet resignations, a much-anticipated bill to legalize casinos in the world’s third-largest economy is looking like a no-show once more.
The bill, which is intended to lead to the authorization of lucrative gambling resorts in Tokyo and Osaka, failed to come to a vote earlier this year in the regular session of the National Diet despite the backing of the prime minister and his governing Liberal Democratic Party, and insiders now say it is foundering in the current special session that ends 30th November.
Casinos remain a sensitive issue, socially and politically, in Japan, a nation of 128 million where gambling flourishes but in more traditional forms—namely pachinko, a pinball-style machine game, and pari-mutuel racing—and opposition among lawmakers is proving more stubborn than the bill’s advocates in the LDP have indicated. Reservations appear to be particularly strong among members of the party’s junior coalition partner, Komeito, a Buddhist-backed faction whose support is seen as critical to getting the bill through the Diet’s upper House of Councillors, where the LDP alone does not have a majority.
In Tokyo, preparations for the 2020 Summer Olympics are proving difficult and expensive, overshadowing the prospects for simultaneous resort development on a major scale, and Governor Yoichi Masuzoe is decidedly cool to the idea.
The public’s position has been more difficult to ascertain since the bill was introduced in the Diet last December. But certainly there has been no groundswell of support. Recent polling shows opinion to be mixed but generally sliding toward the negative. A survey conducted last weekend by the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun found 62% of respondents opposed to legalization, with only 31% in support. A recent Kyodo News Service poll showed 63% of respondents opposed against 33% in favor. A few weeks ago, the newspaper Asahi Shimbun published the results of a telephone poll that showed 59% of respondents opposed, while polling conducted around the same time by media giant Nikkei showed the opposite: 59% in favor.
Reservations have tended to stem from fears of problem gambling, crime and the potential for other adverse social impacts, and these are playing out in the Diet through wrangling over whether to restrict the industry to all but foreign passport holders, as is done in South Korea and Vietnam, or adopt a less extreme course by imposing entry fees on domestic players, as is the rule in Singapore.
Apparently, though, neither has proved satisfactory to date.
“The hurdle is quite high for both lower and upper houses to enact [the bill]” during the current session, Komeito’s policy chief Keiichi Ishii told Reuters.
Shinzo Abe, who was swept into office in December 2012 on a pledge to reform and rejuvenate the country’s sagging economy, has been a vocal supporter of the bill and has included casinos in his vaunted “Abenomics” program as a vehicle for boosting foreign tourism and investment. Plans initially called for the first metropolitan casinos to open in time for the Olympics, and an A-list of global operators have lined up to bid for licenses in a national market whose potential is pegged at upwards of US$15 billion in annual revenue from gaming alone.
However, Mr Abe’s ability to influence the negotiations is now seen as greatly diminished in the wake of Monday’s resignations of Trade and Industry Minister Yuko Obuchi and Justice Minister Midori Matsushima. Ms Obuchi, who quit in connection with alleged misappropriations of campaign funds, is the daughter of a prime minister and was seen as a contender to become Japan’s first female premier. Ms Matsushima resigned after the opposition Democratic Party of Japan filed a criminal complaint accusing her of violating election laws.
Both were appointed in September as part of a cabinet reshuffle that saw five women elevated to ministerial posts in a bid to bolster Mr Abe’s popularity and show his commitment to achieving diversity in the service of Abenomics, and their resignations are seen as a serious blow to the government’s ability to push its agenda in key areas such as raising the national sales tax and restarting the nuclear reactors that were shut down after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Both are highly controversial issues.
With Defense Minister Akinori Eto, also appointed in September, facing questions from the opposition over his political funding, Mr Abe’s own future could become problematic. Though the LDP controls a solid majority in the Diet’s lower House of Representatives, memories are still fresh of his first scandal-ridden stint as prime minister, which lasted only a year in 2006-2007 and saw several ministers forced to resign and one commit suicide.
“Abe’s support will decline,” one highly placed observer told Reuters, “and policy implementation will not go smoothly.”
If the casino bill is pushed into the Diet’s next regular session, which begins in January, it could struggle again, with political attention consumed by more pressing issues, including passage of a national budget, and lawmakers loathe to take on the controversy.
RelatedPosts
