On September 18, we reported that a large party of policemen armed with a search warrant had entered the Palm Court Restaurant and Bar the previous day, and had seized 22 machines from an area known as the 'Entertainment Arcade.' They arrested two customers who were in the arcade at the time, along with Mr Ryan Rahaman, the son of the Managing Director, Mr Jad Rahaman.
As we reported too, the search warrant had been granted under the Prevention of Gambling Act (Cap 9:02), although Mr Jad Rahaman told this newspaper that Palm Court had written to the Ministry of Finance over a year ago seeking permission to open such an entity, and his request had gone unaswered. A new application in May of this year met with a similar fate. Mr Rahaman told our reporter that he believed there was a section in the law under the Tax Act (Cap 80:01) which provided for the operation of slot machines. He further informed us that all the machines had entered the country legally through Customs, and that no official at the time had questioned the legality of the importation.
It would appear that Government only started to show an interest after the gaming machines had actually been installed. A release from the Ministry of Finance, for example, stated that it was aware of the installation of the one-armed bandits with the aim of attracting betting activity, but that it had not authorised any such activity. As a consequence, an operation of that nature should be deemed illegal. In addition, Minister of Trade and Tourism Manzoor Nadir made public that he had asked the then Commissioner of the Guyana Revenue Authority Edgar Heyligar to investigate how the slot machines had entered the country. No permission had been granted for such an enterprise, he said, and the Palm Court was therefore in contravention of the gaming laws.
The import of this was not lost on Mr Rahaman, who moved to the court on August 30, seeking to bar any closure of the Entertainment Arcade. The matter came up before Justice Roy on September 17, who granted the police 21 days to file an affidavit in answer to the issues raised by the operators of the arcade. This was the same day, it will be recalled, that the police seized the slot machines.
The public homed in on the issues relevant to a discussion of the case with unerring accuracy. Both in our letter columns and in a 'What the people say' feature, the majority condemned either the seizure of the machines, the modus operandi of the authorities, or both. Were the one-armed bandits, asked one correspondent pithily, really worse than the two-legged kind? Several other citizens too were concerned about the employment of so many members of the force in what was perceived as a diversion in times like these, more especially given the circumstances surrounding the seizure.
The double standards being applied were of concern to several people. It was pointed out with some merit, that we allow betting shops and lotto, in the latter of which the Government itself has an interest. In moral terms, therefore, people asked where the line should be drawn. Some persons mentioned that the authorities had seized the machines without even waiting for a court decision. Others adverted to the fact that the one-armed bandits appeared to have been imported into the country legally, so why seize them only after they had been installed, instead of at the point of entry.
A clarification of the legal issues applicable in the case awaits a decision of the high court, but no matter what comes out of that, it is time that the authorities gave the larger question another look. In the first place, no matter what the state of the law, they themselves handled the incident a good deal less than competently. If it is indeed the case that Mr Rahaman made application for a licence more than a year ago in the first instance, and then again in May this year, and received no reply, then they should not have been surprised when he got tired of waiting. The constant complaint from all those who have dealings with Government - and not just business people - is that getting a response from bureaucrats at all, let alone a timely response, is mind-bogglingly difficult. When people cannot get an answer from the decision makers, the message they will receive is that there is a vacuum at the centre of power. It is this which does more than anything else to undermine respect for government.
Furthermore, for Mr Rahaman only to be given his answer after he had effected importation of the machines, not only suggests official incompetence, but also opens the authorities to charges of pettiness.
One of the characteristics of this administration has been its reluctance to address policy issues. Its strong suit is physical infrastructure - school buildings, water wells, etc, but it has shown an aversion to anything requiring serious thought on the application of principles. And so it is in this instance. Even without Mr Rahaman's slot machines it seems that the Gaming Act is honoured in the breach. On questions such as gambling, of course, times have changed, and so have people's attitudes. From the moment when the first enquiry from Mr Rahaman was received, therefore, the Government should have responded saying that the matter was under review. And having told him that, they then should have decided to review it.
While we clearly don't want casino gambling at this stage for reasons which hardly require elaboration, is it really the case, as members of the public have already pointed out, that one-armed bandits are going to undermine the moral fabric of our society any more than the betting shops which are now entrenched? No, they are not desirable in and of themselves, but what is Government doing in this day and age legislating for the personal weaknesses of its citizens except where there is unambiguous general agreement on their unethical nature?
As things stand, it is likely that various forms of gaming go on in contravention of the law, and there is no evidence that the government has shown any enthusiasm for addressing this. In addition, anyone nowadays with internet access and a means of payment can go on-line and gamble if they so choose, and there is absolutely nothing the administration can do about it. As time goes on and the information superhighway zooms into more and more Guyanese living rooms, the Government will find that in practical terms it will have less and less control over the leisure activities of its citizens. While it will be able to co-operate with overseas agencies to clamp down on things like on-line child pornography, no co-operation will be forthcoming for the elimination of gambling.
It is time that the Government updated the gaming laws to bring them into line with the realities of the twenty-first century, and as some of our correspondents advised, that it started to concentrate its clearly limited energies on those things which are really undermining the security of this nation's inhabitants.