What Are We Jueteng For?

This is really about talking the talk and walking the walk on the issue, nay, the promise that the Republic’s 100-day-old 15th President ran on and overwhelmingly won - the eradication of corruption.

It was THE political race that ended the 9-year-long reign of be-moled and petite Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and told Filipinos that “you can now dream again for a better life, living behind crooked ways and walking the straight and narrow path.

This is very well the central point in what’s being called Juetengate 2010 with the dramatis personae involving a crusading retired bishop, downtrodden ‘whistle blowers’ with death threats perpetually hounding them, big and small-time politicians tagged as ‘illegal’ gambling lords, and yes, the Presidential practical shooting buddy who doubles up as undersecretary in charge of the national police.

Government insists that LGU- supervised Small Town Lottery and legally-franchised Jai-Alai are the antidote to jueteng but the truth is the two projects have simply become cover activities for jueteng and a companion variant, 'Lot-Teng’, to milk poor bettors of their hard-earned money.

So illegal gambling, rigged and pervasive, steals from the poor and lines the pockets of corrupt policemen and politicians with bribes amounting to billions of pesos enough to fund political campaigns and even new ‘kapilyas’ from Catholic dioceses!

It’s time to end the hypocrisy about jueteng.

It cannot and will not end as an illegal activity for so long as the government rakes in revenue from legal high-roller gambling activities under the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation whose core operations are envisioned to be the magnet for tourism.

Let us legalize Jueteng now and remove the seeming mystic that draws Filipinos to it – the fact that it’s illegal and is done on the fly while being the source of livelihood from bet-taking barangay runners.


The revenue potential from legal jueteng has been conservatively estimated at P 30 to 35B, a full 10 % of the burgeoning national budget deficit.

Let’s do this.