Think twice before you vote

Unlike four nationwide referendums that were held alongside the two presidential elections, the one in the offshore county of Penghu, by all indications, will be valid. That means more than half of the voters will take part. If a simple majority of them vote yes, the long-desired casino may emerge out of the seas like an Aphrodite. The reason is simple. Most of the people there want to get rich quick, albeit opinion is divided over whether gambling should be legalized.

But the fact is that these people have been, we have every reason to believe, mesmerized into believing that a big casino, like those in Las Vegas or Reno, alone may solve their economic woes. We wish to urge them to think twice before they cast their ballots.

The Pescadores — so called by the Portuguese who first “discovered” for the West what we call Penghu in Mandarin or Pinnoo in Hoklo — consist of scores of isles right in the Taiwan Strait, closer to Taiwan than to mainland China. The largest is Magong or Makong, which is known to the West as Pescadore or Fisherman. Well, the waters near the island group are a big fishing ground. As a matter of fact, the small archipelago was developed by the Chinese much earlier than Formosa or Taiwan. There were no indigenous peoples living there when the first Hoklo immigrants came from Quanzhou in Minnan or southern Fujian Province to settle during the Mongol Dynasty.

The Dutch had occupied the Pescadores first before they were persuaded to move over to Tayuan or Taiwan, near present-day Tainan, in the early seventeenth century. Every time Taiwan was attacked, the Pescadores were attacked and occupied first, because they are strategically very important. But economically, the Pescadores have always been very backward. The islanders live the lives of fishermen-farmers. They practice a lot of subsistence farming.

That's why many of the people of Penghu want to have a casino to get a quick buck, or so they have been taught by politicians and developers. They have been asked to set up a nuclear power plant to develop industry. They have turned it down. They can continue to promote aquaculture, building more fish farms, but they think that won't really rake in the money. They have a university, which is small and there's little hope it may grow into a lucrative teaching business.

The only thing left when their Pandora's Box is opened is their hope for Le Casino.

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