Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 2013 36 C rown Resorts’ US$350 million Sri Lanka casino is in limbo as social and political opposition to the industry’s expansion appears to be intensifying in the island nation and forecasts now are that legislative approval will not be achieved this year. Four years on from the end of a bloody civil war whose wounds refuse to heal, the government is looking anxiously to major foreign investments like Crown’s to help rebuild the economy. But it has elected to withdraw a bill that would pave the way for Crown to start building rather than face an outcry in Parliament over the generous tax breaks it contains. The decision also places in jeopardy a resort casino of comparable scope planned by local hospitality giant John Keells Holdings. In all, upwards of US$1 billion in investment could go by the boards. This is not something to which President Mahinda Rajapaksa is accustomed. In his eight years in office he has constructed around himself and his family an all but unassailable and swiftly moving policy machine. The champion of Sri Lanka’s ethnic Sinhalese-Buddhist majority, he is credited with orchestrating the military defeat of a Hindu Tamil insurgency that raged in the north of the island for the better part of a generation. He has installed his brothers Basil and Gotabhaya as ministers of economic development and defense. Brother Chamal presides over Parliament as speaker. One of his sons is a sitting MP. He has a nephew serving as a provincial chief minister. A brother-in-law runs SriLankan Airlines. The ambassadors to Russia and the United States are cousins. He continues to defy world opinion in refusing access to UN inspectors amid reports that his armed In Sri Lanka, Testing the Limits of Power Uncertainty surrounds James Packer’s resort plans as the government encounters mounting opposition to its support of gaming as an economic development tool FEATURES Rendering of Crown Resorts’ planned US$350 million casino in Colombo.