By AMADO P. MACASAET
MALAYA
MALAYA
‘Mrs. Juico knows only too well that the STL is a front for jueteng, The bet collectors soliciting STL bets also collect bets for jueteng.’
The franchises of small town lottery operators expired on Sunday, June 30. Before the expiry the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office decided to extend the licenses for three more months “subject to the approval of the President.”
The proposal is sitting in the Office of the President. No action has been taken.
I say with certainty that Mrs. Margie Juico, chairman of the board of the PCSO, did not propose the extension to create room for bargaining with the present license holders. My educated guess is that she wanted to review the performance of the lottery operators and necessarily renew the licenses of those who performed well.
Mrs. Juico knows only too well that the STL is a front for jueteng, The bet collectors sell tickets or betting slips for STL provided by the PCSO. They also have betting slips for jueteng. I know from personal experience that more money is collected for jueteng than for the small town lottery.
By the way, PCSO is changing the STL to Loteria ng Bayan. Same dog with different collar.
Lottery operators are talking about ways to renew their licenses. They have gone as far as talking money. One group is said to have parted with P300 million to have the licenses of what appears to be a syndicate renewed.
There is hardly any money selling lottery tickets. The agents get a small – 10 percent or less – percentage of the sale. The woman I talked to in a cockpit in Lipa said she is lucky if she sells P200 worth of lottery tickets in a day. That gives her about P20. That is good for half a kilo of rice.
Why does she insist on selling STL tickets? Because she also collects jueteng bets recorded, needless to say, on a separate betting slip.
Plain sense tells me that daily lottery will never prosper for as long as the prize for the winning combination is very much lower than jueteng gives.
The interest in a new or renewed license in STL to be called Loteria ng Bayan is not in the lottery itself. It is in jueteng. That is why there is a mad – even expensive—scramble for a new license or a renewed one.
One of my informants in a high place told me that a close adviser tells the President there is no urgency to act on the proposal to extend the Small Town Lottery. After all the operation can go on under any name.
If there is grain of truth to what I have been told, it must be the same adviser who might have knowledge of who paid an alleged powerful official with P300 million for a string of renewed or new licenses for a jueteng syndicate.
In the first place why does the name STL have to be changed? There is no need for it. By whatever name it is called, it remains lottery supervised by the PCSO. Why would a syndicate pay off powerful people to have licenses renewed or new ones issued? It will take decades to recover P300 million from commissions from lottery sales.
It is jueteng the syndicate does not want to lose. There is oodles and oodles of money from the illegal numbers game “legalized” by operators who order their bet collectors to also try and sell STL tickets.
The reality is bettors in jueteng seek out the bet takers. Bet takers of STL, on the other hand, seek out the betters. Buyers are few for the simple reason that while both jueteng and STL are long shot plays, the former offers a remarkably higher prize per bet peso.
If the President does not act on the proposal soon, some powerful people probably including a few of his own, will make a pile taking bribes for licenses, new or renewed. No problem is solved.
The illegal numbers game called jueteng will never disappear from the landscape. It is STL that makes it easy for operators to defy authorities when bet takers are apprehended. They will say they are selling lottery tickets, not soliciting jueteng bets.
If the government has no mind to increase the winning prize for STL, it may not be a bad idea to abolish it. In its place the PCSO should conduct daily draws for lotto. The attraction of big money in lotto is far bigger than the prize of winning combinations in jueteng. This should automatically kill the illegal numbers game.
There is the problem of lotto tickets costing P10 per combination of six numbers. Poor people put in a bet of as small as one peso in jueteng. One peso can win P8 in jueteng. Lotto on the other hand has a bigger prize in the millions even if a daily draw is conducted.
Everything is legal. Daily lotto draws give daily hopes for betters for far bigger prizes. Since jueteng would be driven away by daily lotto draws, corruption among government officials, policemen and a few lawmakers included, will be dead. This sits well with the governance slogan of “matuwid na daan”
In a manner of speaking the refusal if not indifference of the President to approve the extension of STL for three months, is tacit toleration of the illegal jueteng game. It seems he does not know it.
It could very well be his people who do not want the President to sign the extension. The reason is obvious. The extension opens to them a negotiating room for very large sums.
There goes the “matuwid na daan.” The President’s own men are making it crooked.
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email: amadomacasaet@yahoo.com
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