Upadate 12/05/2010 - At last, it was Muslims that made it possible. A day after I posted this entry, the government of Malaysia, led by a muslim leader finally issued a sports betting license to Berjaya Group in conjunction with the upcoming World Cup in South Africa. The license understandably had been delayed for six years since 2004 during Pak Lah's tenure as Prime Minister.
Original Posting -
Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Dr Awang Adek Hussin told reporters in Parliament earlier that legal football betting was being considered to contain the expected spread of illegal betting activities during the World Cup.
Other reason in rationalizing to legalize sports betting is the revenues which is collected in form of tax can be used for sports development. That's why the government thinks, legalizing the sports betting is a solution to the nation financial crisis.
So, what we can summarize here is, there are two main reasons behind the move. First, to prevent illegal betting from overspreading and the second is, funding sports developments. From my point of view, both ideas which is came from what so called a Deputy Minister are baseless, immoral and totally unacceptable.
Can the government assure the public that the illegal betting won't happen at all if Ministry of Finance ready to license the sports betting? I just don't think the illegal football betting problem can be solved to the core with the implementation of legal sports betting.
I'm also afraid the expected incomes from the sports betting operator would not be channeled in to develop sports in Malaysia, but it will flows out to somewhere else. For example, the money are so useful in dealing with by election, dumping billions of ringgit in shape of instant projects to win peoples' vote.
However, respond from the public are quite shocking, as various parties from different races, religion and political background are united together in condemning the government's proposal.
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