The House Of The Rising Sun

Hantu Laut

Why has one form of gambling become an issue while others seemed to have been accepted? Isn't Malaysia already one big gambling house. From 4-digit betting, horse racing, slot machine to full-fledged casino, we have it all.Why the noise about sport betting?

Have Malaysians invariably become victims of disinformation, the blind follow the blind and making noise for the sake of making noise.

Sport betting may be less attractive to many people than say 4 digits or any number game and the devil of it all, the one-armed bandits or slot machines.

With sport betting only those who has clue of the sport would be betting as opposed to other game of chance where anyone can participate.

The detractors of sport betting are blindly opposing it because some vested interest groups are not happy, why they are not getting a share of the cake and, therefore, trumped the war drum.Those so called holier than thou living on their high moral grounds and having scruples about gambling are just pawns in the game.

I agree with Raja Petra here they are not against gambling per se but against licenced gambling.Underground gambling is just as big if not bigger.I know of a friend who made almost RM1 million in the last World Cup, so he says.So, don't underestimate the size of underground gambling.

I do agree there must be some form of control over gambling in the country but the unfortunate thing is Malaysians are barking up the wrong tree.They keep their eyes and ears shut to what is more dangerous and one that have brought more serious social ills and untold miseries to families.

Those who suffered most are in the low and middle income group.Those with compulsive gambling habit of the breadwinners.

In term of severity the slot machines are the most dangerous and more often than not did not comply with international standard on the ratio of payout.You can well imagine who are the inspectors to police compliance? A full-pledged casino is less dangerous than those unregulated one-armed bandits scattered around the country.



































These three slot-machine clubs under the guises of cafe lounge are only 200 meters away from each other at Tg.Aru, Kota Kinabalu.There are many more scattered all over the city.


These money-grabbing machines are scattered throughout the nation under the guises of membership sport clubs and virtually controlled by one man or his companies.Unlike bona fide clubs you don't have to pay to be a member to this phony sport club because they know they will eventually get all your money.It racked in million of dollars every month of hard-earned money of the low and middle income group who dreamed the elusive dream...of becoming rich from gambling.

The very rich don't gamble, if they do it's what they called spare change, so it is those with little money that frequent this kind of gambling joint.

Gambling is addictive and can destroy lives of families of gamblers who have no control over their habits and the slot machines are there 24/7 or 365 days a years waiting for them.

Licences for slot machines are given out by the Federal Ministry of Finance.Obviously, the usual give and take policy would have been the reasons to allow these money-grabbing devils in our midst.

This so -called sport clubs have sprouted in the cities, suburbs and urban outskirts close to rural population. There are scores if not hundreds of such clubs in Sabah. I don't know about Peninsula Malaysia and Sarawak, I guess they would have the same if not more of these factitious sport clubs.

These iron-clad electronic monsters allow you to gamble your money up to RM80.00 on one push of the button.For the bold and reckless that's money down the drain very quickly.You can lose thousands in a flash.Here the machines only come in minimum denomination of RM1.00 and RM0.50 and you can bet up to 80 times in one go.

In Burswood Australia they are less greedy and more reasonable, the common areas only have 1 cents, 2 cents, 5cents and 10 cents machine which allow you to bet up to 100 times.Still cheaper and more dependably regulated than the monsters in this country.

PAS youth has decided to mobilise a 100,000 strong rally to the Istana to protest against the sport betting but conveniently overlooked other more pressing problems detrimental to the Muslim community.

Obviously, we are more interested in political gimmickry rather than the welfare and well being of the Muslim community.

We should wake up to the other realities of life, those that will lead us to the brink of disaster and sadly we have the habits of sweeping our problems under the carpet and denied that we have a problem and Muslims all over the world seem to have this attitude and false sense of invincibility.

In her second book "Nomad" how in one of the chapters the writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali apostate wrote about the husband of one of her cousins who was seropositive for AIDS and sadly out of ignorance and sense of invincibility the man keep saying "AIDS?! I don't have that! I am a Muslim! I am a Somali! We don't get AIDS!

In his case, ignorance is not bliss, it is deadly.

We all know and these are published facts.We have a serious drug addiction problem among our youths, majority Muslims, we have multiplying HIV problem, majority Muslims, we have babies born out of wedlock, majority Muslims,we have babies out of wedlock killed and dumped, majority Muslims and lastly we have the abominable Mat Rempit almost exclusively Muslim boys.

Is the government and Islamic party like PAS doing anything about it? Are there programmes in place to bring education and awareness to counter these social ills afflicting the Muslim community.

If there is, than it must be either invisible or I am blind, because I have not seen or heard of any of it.

Issuing new licences to counter underground gambling may not be the answer, enforcement of the law is.

Below is the reason I titled this article "The House Of The Rising Sun"