On the afternoon of Thursday 15th December, while the global gaming industry celebrated a great early Santa Claus present in the form of Japan’s Diet approving a casino law for the country, in Brazil Senators in the plenary session continued a 20-year long debate to legalize casinos, bingo and the illegal street lottery jogo do bicho and then voted to send bill PLS 186/2014 to the Constitution and Justice Committee for yet further debate and into an uncertain future.
Postponements of debate and voting on the casino bill by the Senate has been attributed to personal gain by many legislators, more interested in what’s in it for me than what’s good for the country. As debate and voting on the bill was to approve or not a bill that has been debated ad nauseum, voting to send the casino bill to another Senate Commission is another ploy by the lobbies that oppose casinos in Brazil.
From São Paulo, Edgar Lenzi – Director President of BetConsult, leader in the Gaming Brazilian sector, said: “Senators voted 44 by 19 in favour of sending the proposed law to the CCJ (Constitutional and Justice Commission) for a debate on the constitutional grounds that might affect the law. This Commission has the responsibility of making a constitutional analysis of the law and debates legislative proposals to the Brazilian Congress. In fact, the commission does not make an analysis on the proposed law in itself but on the relationship between such law and the Constitution.”
Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, the plenary held a full public meeting with discussions on white paper PL 442/1991, where many sectors of the society debated the merits of this casino bill, for and against legalization.
Lenzi, concluded: “There has not been a debate and voting in the House of Representatives on the request of an urgency motion to vote on bill PL 442/1991, this House’s casino bill, and it still could happen this year. On the matter relating to the Senate, there is still no agenda for the session of the CCJ to debate project PLS 186/2014, and this will probably happen after February 2017”.
