Prime Casino torn down, but it is not Genting

The local news headlines have been hogged by the death of Lim Goh Tong, the gambling boss, championing how great a Chinese he had been but neglecting to highlight the huge number of people who have committed suicide when they lost all their belongings including the shirt on their back, at the ever popular casinos belonging to him.

Families have been destroyed, marriages have broken up, parents and children have despised each other, and the gambling industry established by Lim has spawned a vast network of evil destruction especially for the Chinese community that includes illegal money lending, physical abuses of borrowers, wives and children sold into prostitution to repay debts, women losing their morals just to try their luck one more time, parents killing each other to grab insurance money needed to fuel the gambling addiction, homes destroyed, houses and business premises splayed with paint, bullets posted to debtors as warning threats, valuables pawned, education forsaken, lives lost, relationships broken and the list just goes on and on.

How do I know all these? Personal experiences. My own relatives have lost everything that they have lived for, and their addiction to "Uncle Lim's" gambling dens had been like a heroin-addicted user hunting for another fix, and willing to live a life of crime just to fuel their habits.

So, in my humble opinion, Lim is not my hero. Is he yours?

In the above photograph which I clipped, it shows the 21-story Sands Casino Hotel being demolished in Atlantic City, New Jersey on October 18, 2007. During the good heydays, the Sands Casino had hosted celebrities like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. It was reduced to thousands of tons of rubble on Thursday evening in the latest effort to remake the seaside gambling town.

Can this happen the Lim's casino? Do you wish it to happen, like a terminator searching to destroy the termites' nest?

Lim Goh Tong, founder of Genting died..

Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong, founder and honorary life president of Genting Group, passed away at 11.20am Tuesday at the Subang Jaya Medical Centre. The tycoon, who turned 90 in April this year, was renowned for his vision in transforming Genting Highlands from an unexplored hilltop to one of the world's most successful casino resorts...The Star

Never before has such a man influenced the lives of so many, particularly in the matters of gambling. It had been said that the Chinese people cannot do without gambling. But I beg to differ, because I know of many many, and I mean many, well groomed Chinese who abhor gambling. Lim Goh Tong may have departed from this world, but the legacy of gambling that he has left behind continue to haunt and torment living members of Chinese families who are bound into such an addiction and unable to break free.

The ills of gambling leads to other crimes, the list of which is limitless. Within my own extended family, I do know of such despair and pain caused by gambling debts, which should be unnecessary.

Not many people will cry at the funeral of Lim Goh Tong, but many people will be relieved that the man who is instrumental in instituting gambling in Malaysia, and wrecking havocs in families is at last gone.

Do you believe gambling can solve financial woes?