A couple of years ago during the Lenín Moreno Administration, it appeared that some coastal municipalities were about to hold votaciones to potentially allow the casino industry to be re-established in Ecuador.
The results of those votes, if actually held, were apparently not reported in the national or international press. Then early in 2020 came the pandemic and the issue of casinos seemed to completely disappear from view.
Casinos had been outlawed and closed about eight years ago during the long reign of Moreno's predecessor, Rafael Correa, who managed to get a national referendum in front of the electorate in 2011. In responding to one of the referendum questions, a plurality of voters said no to gambling. The gaming venues were all closed by late March 2013.
This month, May 2021, a new president was inaugurated -- Guillermo Lasso.
Two weeks before the inauguration, an Ecuadorian website that e-publishes in español took a look at whether a Lasso Administration would look favorably at the prospect of allowing casinos to open/re-open in La República. The economy has changed so much in recent years, what with the 7.8-magnitude earthquake destruction, the oil industry retrenchment and the pandemic. The argument favoring casinos is to bring back foreign 'punters' to assist in reviving tourism in Ecuador.
Any quotes that I post on this thread from the article will appear in English based on my best-efforts translation.
cccmedia
Casinos Coming Back to Ecuador? 2021-22 Edition
The new president, Guillermo Lasso, is in agreement with the idea that the casino industry should reopen in Ecuador in order to help grow national tourism.
That is the opening sentence and paragraph in the article I was referring to, published by the site Radio La Calle (the street) ...
Lasso's position was expressed in a conversation he had last year as a presidential candidate with Niels Olsen, now the incoming minister of tourism, according to the news article. The author of the article is María Isabel Urbano. The dateline is Quito, May 11, 2021.
"The state is not here to educate adult persons," said the now-president. "The government is not here to prohibit beer drinking, going to a casino or a 'discoteca'."
Source... www.radiolacalle.com
I finally found a publication that explains what happened to the coastal consultation initiatives that would have allowed area residents to vote on whether to allow casinos to resume operations.
According to Games Brasil Magazine in an article dated February 2020 (shortly before the pandemic began), Ecuador's constitutional court ruled the initiatives to be unconstitutional. The court ruled that Ecuador's national laws would have to be changed in order to make the planned votaciones valid.
So the voters in Manabí, Bahía de Caraquez and Salinas never got to vote on the casino issue.
cccmedia
Presidente Lasso's support for re-opening casinos is important in that he was signaling he will not block the efforts to restore gaming in Ecuador.
However, it will take more than his support to produce that result.
According to the May 11 article at Radio La Calle, there are two options...
1. A popular initiative needing one quarter of one percent of the electorate to present the issue to voters.
2. A national referendum (that may contain issues beyond just casinos)
similar in form to the 2011 referendum that led to casinos' demise.
--
According to my research, the only other country to have permanently banned casinos since the 1950's was Fidel Castro's Cuba, late in that decade, after overthrowing the government of the USA-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Batista had been heavily involved in Cuba's hotel-casino business.
cccmedia
Casino/free-trade-zones left out of
national referendum.
El Presidente decided to limit his
referendum questionnaire for the
public to vote on .. to constitutional
issues.
This leaves out public input
via referendum on
potential free-trade zones where
the law against casinos might not
apply.
You can read about non-gaming
questions in the proposed referendum
at our new thread Ecuador National
Referendum 2023, reachable via
Expat.com's Ecuador forum
welcome page.
cccmedia in Quito
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