Ba­hamas–The peo­ple of the Ba­hamas are vot­ing on a two-part ref­er­en­dum that could le­galise cer­tain forms of gam­bling on the is­lands. As an­nounced by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Bernard Not­tage, vot­ers will be asked for a ref­er­en­dum to be held to­day whether they sup­port cre­ation of a na­tion­al lot­tery and the reg­u­la­tion and tax­a­tion of now un­der­ground gam­bling cen­tres.

Ba­hami­ans are cur­rent­ly barred from gam­bling in casi­nos at the is­lands' re­sorts. How­ev­er, many go to un­der­ground gam­bling cen­tres called "web shops" to bet on num­bers in tele­vised US lot­ter­ies. Prime Min­is­ter Per­ry Christie has said the mea­sure would gen­er­ate US$20 mil­lion a year in tax­es if ap­proved.

How­ev­er, the Ba­hamas Tri­bune re­ports that the gov­ern­ment faces fierce op­po­si­tion from a pow­er­ful church lob­by that con­demns gam­bling.

Re­cent­ly, a promi­nent church leader on the is­lands claimed that web shop op­er­a­tors have been giv­ing away lav­ish prizes, in­clud­ing hous­es, cars and mon­ey, to "bribe the Ba­hami­an elec­torate" in­to vot­ing for the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of gam­bling. Ac­cord­ing to the Tri­bune, he al­so crit­i­cised suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments for al­low­ing the un­der­ground gam­bling rack­et to flour­ish for decades.

CMC