Earn from it.
Some will violently disagree with the views in this article. Some will agree that it makes sense. Whatever, this is my take on the age-old problem called “jueteng.”
When I was growing up in my lola’s house in San Pablo, I would always see a middle-aged man come entering the back-gate of our house where the car was parked and nearest to the “dirty” kitchen. He would talk to our driver, my yaya, our gardener and the other house helpers, and scribble something on a piece of paper. Sometimes even my lola would send word to him, in between her mahjong sessions with a permanent circle of friends.
It was the village “kubrador.” And even when I was already a college student, on occasional visits I would see the same guy, now much older and walking with a slight limp, collecting bets from our household help.
When Joey Lina was running for governor of Laguna, I once heard our gardener who had also aged by the time and now deceased, debate with someone about local politics. “Ayaw ko kay Lina. Basta kontra sa jueteng, ayaw ko rin,” said the poor guy.
There was a time my yaya’s daughter, now an executive in a food manufacturing firm, told me that in San Pablo, as many as four jueteng draws (“bola” is the local term) were held in a day.
The jueteng trade in San Pablo used to be run by a Don Terio, later by a Doña Charing (see how they called these lords and ladies of jueteng), then succeeded by heaven knows who. Doña Charing was even invited to open branches of universal banks in her prime. Money talks. Or as a Roman emperor once said, “money has no smell.”
When we moved to Butuan City, they said someone from Batangas brought jueteng there, but it did not flourish. But they had “masiao” and “last two,” and also “suer-tres” in most parts of Mindanao. And always, they had police and local warlord protection. The masiao kings and the suer-tres operators eventually entered politics and won. The same is true in Luzon. Why, even in Italy, there are jueteng operators. Imported from the Philippines!
There have been countless congressional investigations on jueteng after another. Correction: Senate investigations. Congressmen would not want exposés on the jueteng “intelihensya,” he he he.
Jueteng-gate caused the downfall of a duly-elected and highly popular president. The son of a former president was also implicated in several Senate hearings on jueteng, with the prima sumbungera (whistleblower in English) now ensconced as a director of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, upon which jueteng has piggy-backed its local operations, or so it is accused of.
During martial law days, they whispered the name of Mang Gusting of Tarlac as the biggest jueteng operator. Then there was a Santos in charge of NCR, and a young kid on the block, now much older and much richer—Bong Pineda of Lubao upon the plains of Pampanga. And Atong Ang.
Among the well-known politicians, the most famous of all was Chavit Singson, the hero or heel (depending on which side of the political fence you were in at the time) who accused his compadre Erap, then President of the Republic, of being a jueteng coddler, and earning oodles of cash from it.
It goes on and on.
Now a marine general who became famous because he stood up against the commander-in-chief on Hello Garci’s circumlocutions of the electoral process, has been appointed to head the PCSO, whose “legal” STL, or so it is alleged, is a camouflage for illegal jueteng. There will never be an end to the accusations.
And because it is easy money made from a “victimless” crime, the corrupting influence will always be around.
My point is simple. Countless administrations have either tolerated it or tried to stop it, but jueteng continues to flourish, from the dawn of the 20th century well into the present 21st.
How to solve a problem like jueteng?
Legalize it.
Each year, hold a public bidding in the capital plaza, with both national and local officials in attendance, for the franchise to operate jueteng in a congressional district (or whatever unit of local government, be it town, city or province). In places outside of Luzon where jueteng is not in flavor, hold the bidding for the masiao or last two or whatever franchise.
Start with a floor price, say, P200 million annually for the territory covered. Anyone who participates will have to bid higher than the floor price. Assume the winning bidder offered P250 million. He has to pay half of it up-front to the National Treasury, and the balance on July 1 of the year.
Half of the total revenue collected from the public bidding goes to the local government, and the other half to the national. The legislators can even earmark where the funds can be dedicated to, whether to health, or public schools, or the police.
The winning operator gets a franchise for one year, and government could not care less how he operates his gambling business. He is not bothered by the police, or the barangay chieftain, or the mayor, not even the congressman. Since he paid up-front, he does not need to bribe anybody. He is “legit,” and his business, no matter what moralists say, is “legal.”
If the parish priest or his lord bishop, the pastor, the whoever religious leader dislikes jueteng or masiao, he can fulminate against it day and night in his pulpit. The truly “moral,” the truly “religious” should pay him heed. Those hard-headed guys who prefer to be “victims” of a victimless crime and thus “invest” their five bucks or more in the numbers game, bahala kayo sa buhay ninyo.
Then the police can go after criminals whether drug lords or killers or robbers or syndicates and even perpetrators of petty crimes who truly victimize the citizenry, and the politicians are no longer corrupted by “intelihensya.”
Government and its leaders have more things to attend to than be bothered by jueteng and its variants.