“Mishandling of Referendum had Made Us a Laughing Stock” and “The Fate of 4,000 Hangs in the Balance”, Article Critique Example

Nicki Kelly’s Between the Lines editorial entitled “Mishandling of Referendum had Made Us a Laughing Stock” deals with the issue of online gambling in the Bahamas. The article examines the irony of the Bahamas Prime Minister, Perry Christie, and government attempting to pass regulations that would allow for the continued existence of online gambling web-sites. The irony, according to Kelly, is due to the fact that the regulations that were drafted and attempting to be passed were not based on solid research regarding the economic and social consequences of continued legalization of online gambling. Instead, the regulations were thrown together in short-order to allow for the continuation of online gambling with the reservation that the same regulations might be modified after they were passed. Additionally, Kelly points out that the Bahamas government employed a South African consulting team to advise them on the issue of online gambling while also commenting that gambling is an illegal act in South Africa.

Kelly’s editorial basically takes the Bahamas government and Perry Christie to task for not throughly understanding the issue of online gambling and also for failing to come out strongly on one side of the issue or the other. The basic thrust of the editorial is to suggest that the failure of the Bahamas government to hold a stable and studies position on the issue makes the Bahamas a laughingstock in the eyes of the world because it is a relatively simple issue that should easily fall under government control. Kelly intimates that fear of religious backlash and a failure to amply research the impact of online gambling on the Bahamas citizenry are the main reasons for the failure of the government to adequately address the situation. In many ways, Kelly is not only criticizing the Christie administration’s position on the issue of online gambling, but criticizing the administrations capacity to govern at all. This aspect of the editorial is actually its greatest strength because it uses the microcosm of the online gambling issue as a means for addressing an overall perceived incompetence of the Bahamas government in total.

The Scribe’s editorial Off the Political Cuff “The Fate of 4,000 Hangs in the Balance” deals with the issue of the online gambling referendum put forward in the Bahamas. The editorial consists of a strong criticism against those who had been lobbying for a “no” vote on the continuation of online gambling shops. The Scribe points out that many of the most vocal opponents of online gambling were members of religious organizations but that those who view online gambling in a negative way are ignoring the human toll that would be a consequence of the “no” vote. The idea that Prime Minister Christie is attempting to sidestep the issue of the referendum is also a strong aspect of the Scribe’s editorial. The Prime Minister, according to the editorial, adopted a neutral stance on the referendum while simultaneously pledging that if the referendum went toward the discontinuation of gambling shops that the Bahamas government would find a way to re-employ the displaced workers. According to the Scribe, Christie also pledged to support the results of the referendum no matter what the outcome.

The greatest strength of the editorial is its appeal toward the human dimension of the issue. The article is very convincing in showing how government “red tape” and double-talk exists on a separate level than the everyday lives of the common people. In fact, this can be seen as the main point of the article: to remind both the average citizen and government that the role of legislation and law is to help facilitate the welfare of common people. The weakness of the editorial is that it is openly pro-gambling and,a s such, presents little in the way of objectivity. The editorial reads a bit like propaganda while simultaneously accusing the anti-gambling side of the issue as propagandistic. This weakens the impact of the editorial somewhat. it’s hard to belive that anyone reading the article would have their mind changed by its contents.