THE NOBLEST of intentions.
I find that in the People Power Volunteers for Reforms offering to help the Department of the Interior and Local Government arrest jueteng collectors in Pampanga in the wake of Secretary Mar Roxas’ outburst at the regional peace and order council meeting less than two weeks back.
“We want (Roxas) to deputize us to help to make arrests and prove there is jueteng. It should be stopped because it is not just a game or form of entertainment.” So said Eduardo Manugue, PPVR Pampanga chapter chair, in the Philippine Daily Inquirer story of the intrepid Tonette Orejas.
“Those who control jueteng have controlled politics in our province.” So was Manugue quoted as having declared.
The police mantra of “No jueteng in Pampanga, only STL” is pure hogwash to Manugue. As it is to the many who fail to find the finest line between the illegal one and the legal other.
Reported Tonette: “The illegal operation is revealed when cabos (area managers) accept tumbok—a bet on the reverse order of a pair of winning numbers for STL—which also gets a corresponding prize money.”
(The way I understand it, tumbok refers to placing bets on each of the numbers in the combination with the amount of winning determined by the order of the numbers drawn.
Say, your combo is 1-27 and you bet P10 on 1, and P20 on 27. If the order goes 27-1, your prize money will be corresponding to your P20 bet not to your P10 bet. Anyways, what do I know about jueteng?)
Tonette furthered: “Manugue said his group had information that some cobradores (bet collectors), in collusion with cabos, were not remitting STL collections and instead pocket the money.
“But when a pair of numbers wagered in STL wins, these cobradores give the prize money to winners. In this scheme, the illegal operation is from within the STL system.” Manugue added.
“This government can stop STL but it cannot stop jueteng until the financiers and operators hear President Aquino order the police to stop jueteng.” He also said.
So how will the financiers and operators hear President Aquino order the police to stop jueteng?
By deputizing PPVR to arrest jueteng cobradors, cabos, revisadores, even financiers, and the lords themselves?
Aye, the noblest of intentions there, indeed. And as some joker said too long ago, the road to that hot place no one would like to go to is paved with these. There’s some crusaders’ mind-stiff there again. Some morality play being restaged.
It may take more than the Christ calling Peter the rock upon whom He would build his Church to make Simon Barjona immediately ceased to be, than for President Aquino to call a stop to jueteng and it will immediately cease to be.
Concededly, jueteng is a moral issue. As certainly, it is more. Much more.
So morality assumes the highest plane. But that does not necessarily make it the most immediate, if not most compelling of the issues at play in jueteng. The political, social and economic assume primacy– visceral, and therefore, gut issues as they are.
So a moral victory will be the eradication of jueteng. So can morality feed, house, school those hundreds if not tens of thousands of cobradores, cabos, revisadores and their families?
Not too long ago, when the lotto was impacted on the nation to stamp out jueteng, daily-double and some other illegal numbers game that somewhat displaced the cobradores, cabos and revisadores, a spike was noted in the crime index, from petty thievery to small drug-deals.
Reaffirming there the link between crimes, especially against property, and the absence of means of livelihood, hunger, want.
With a deputized PPVR arresting jueteng workers, a graver moral issue shall most surely ensue. Noblest of intentions going hell-bound right there.
Meanwhile, Punto! ace reporter Joey Pavia reported here yesterday that the Small Town Lottery in Pampanga collected at least P2.402 billion in six years, registering its highest-ever annual gross in 2011 amounting to almost P.6 billion.
This, notwithstanding reports of bookies siphoning STL earnings.
A total of 37 percent of the gross sales (within that six-year period) was partitioned thus: Bureau of Internal Revenue with P75,625,222.56; municipality, P217,876,684.54; province, P108,938,342.27; district, P54,469,171.13; the Philippine National Police (local), P98,044,508.0); the PNP (national), P10,893,834.23; and print materials, P31,966,471.80; and charity fund, P163,119,188.81.
Charity works funded with P163,119,188.81. Some redemptive values in gambling may obtain there.
As we find in 1 Corinthians 13:13: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”
Or is this blasphemy?
