ARE Filipinos natural-born gamblers? Marvin Castell and Joel Tanchuco, economics professors at the De La Salle University, posed this question in a paper they wrote in 2004 on what they described as a “habitual and pervasive social activity” among Pinoys.

“From the humblest barrios to the most affluent villages, Filipinos are into gambling,” they observed, citing the abundance of casinos, lotto and bingo outlets, municipal cockpit arenas, card games and “cara y cruz” on city streets, and bookies that go house to house for the illegal numbers game called jueteng.

A recent UCLA study does suggest that gambling has its roots in traditional Asian culture. The Chinese, in particular, are said to hold strong beliefs in luck, fate, and chance — concepts that many Filipinos, given China’s strong historical influence in the Philippines, also live by, and thus explain their gambling ways.

Back in 1999, findings of the Social Weather Stations survey also showed that Filipinos’ moral attitudes against gambling hardly influence their gambling behavior. There were as many people (63 percent) who said gambling was bad even for small bets and when done only for a short time as those (64 percent) who admitted engaging in a gambling activity in the past 12 months.

Many would however justify gambling as just a form of recreation, a “harmless” pastime, as if the amounts they’ve already lost to wagering haven’t already cost them a fortune. Such hard-earned money, Castell and Tanchuco said, should have gone to more productive pursuits like savings.

Videographer/Producer: Alecks P. Pabico
Video editor: Francis Ventura

CONTROVERSIAL GOVERNOR. Armando Sanchez has been linked to jueteng by his political opponents and by the Batangas clergy.

BATANGAS GOVERNOR Armando Sanchez says journalist Mei Magsino-Lubis is “lying through her teeth when she says she is in hiding.” He also says “the only time there were PNP personnel looking for her” was when she was still the subject of an arrest operation covered by “a valid arrest warrant” regarding the oral defamation case he had filed against the Inquirer correspondent.

After she posted bail, the governor says in a written reply to questions sent to him by the PCIJ, “the operation to arrest her was stopped.”"We completely deny the canard that two prisoners from the Batangas Provincial Jail were deliberately let loose to kill Mei Magsino-Lubis,” he adds. “(We) challenge any and everyone to conduct unannounced head counts of the prisoners in the Provincial Jail.”

Such a head count would have meant a lot during the time of Magsino-Lubis’s own “escape.” But now it would be futile, if citizens’ crime watchgroups are to be believed. Ellen Gran of the Crusade Against Violence, for instance, says prisoners who are let out of jail to commit crimes at the instigation of powerful people are usually let in again after the deed is done or the plot is uncovered. This gives the criminals the perfect alibi because it appears they had been in prison all the time.

Governor Sanchez of course would probably rather that people count not the prisoners in the provincial jail, but his accomplishments as a public official, especially as mayor of Sto. Tomas town. This includes a three-story town hall that was built, according to official statements, with P22 million of his own personal funds. His stint as mayor also produced a 28-bed hospital and garnered the municipality the top prize in a nationwide search for the cleanest and greenest town in 2002. It also led to the computerization of Sto. Tomas’s real property tax collection system, which, says Sanchez, resulted in a 300-percent increase in collection and enabled the municipality to make the huge leap from being fifth-class to first-class. He had wanted this computerization program to be replicated throughout the whole of Batangas, but his attempt to do so has somehow dragged him into controversy.

Then again, there are other controversies that Sanchez has found himself in, foremost of which involves the nagging allegation that he is a jueteng lord. Journalists from the region have long referred to the alleged links of Sanchez to the illegal game. When he won the gubernatorial seat last year, among the first questions the local media there asked was on Sanchez’s supposed jueteng connections. He and his supporters have repeatedly denied this. In the local paper Batangan, one of his key campaign personnel and present provincial administrator, Ronnie Geron, was quoted as saying, “Arman is not into jueteng.” Geron, however, said that his boss was a partner in an “online sports betting” venture, although he also said Sanchez would soon divest himself of his interests in that business.

In his reply to the PCIJ’s queries, Sanchez himself says, “We reiterate that we do not know anything about jueteng.” But he also says, “We have been very consistent in our stand for its legalization, from the time I became mayor, during the two terms that I served in Sto. Tomas and up to the time I was elected Governor. Now that it has stopped, we are hoping that the issue would be laid to rest.”

For sure, Sanchez, who, based on his own assets statement, is worth at least P90 million, does not comport himself like a lord — not even a jueteng lord. This is even though he was, by many accounts, already rich by the time he entered politics and became mayor of Sto. Tomas in 1998. Educated as a mechanical engineer, Sanchez worked in Saudi Arabia in the 1980s before coming back and reportedly starting several businesses, among them construction firms, a travel agency, and a security agency. But in the conjugal 2004 statement of assets and liabilities he filed with his wife Edna, at present the Sto. Tomas mayor, no business interests appear.

Although wealthy, the portly governor prefers comfort to class. Those who know him well say that even while at work at the capitol, he likes to wear a kamiseta (sleeveless undershirt), a pair of loose shorts, and flipflops. Like many of his provincemates, he also tends to talk loudly, as if always gearing for a fight. Which is just as well. The national dailies say that in fact Sanchez is in a “brawl” with his own vice governor, who will not let go of the jueteng issue, aside from other things. In the prefatory statement in the graft case he filed before the Ombudsman in early September, Vice Governor Richard ‘Ricky’ Recto even says that Sanchez is “widely known” to be a jueteng lord not just in Batangas, “but nationwide.” According to Recto, Sto. Tomas has been known as the “center of (Sanchez’s) jueteng operations for the last 20 years.”

Earlier this year, Sanchez’s name had also surfaced in lists of government officials with alleged jueteng links. Drawn up by the Department of Justice and the People’s Crusade Against Jueteng, these lists were partly why Sanchez was summoned last June to the Senate hearings on jueteng. But Sanchez told the Senate that he would be in Japan on a business trip at the time and could not make it. He was not summoned again.

Recto’s case against Sanchez, however, is not really about jueteng. Rather, it alleges that the governor “and his 15 co-conspirators” are carrying out a P350-million real property tax computerization project under anomalous circumstances, rigging the bid and awarding the deal to a “dummy” corporation, the Automated Data Processing Technologies Inc. (ADPT), purportedly owned by Sanchez himself.

The governor dismisses Recto’s findings of irregularities, saying they are “at best a flawed opinion.” Sanchez says all of capitol’s projects, including the computerization, have gone through all the procedures laid out in the law. He also says, “(The) final step mandated by the New Procurement Law is the review process now being done by the (Commission on Audit).”

In earlier denials of wrongdoing published in local newspapers, capitol officials defending the contract said that all documents pertaining to the contract were immediately turned over to COA after the first payment was made. Sanchez now says, “We are asking everybody to simmer down a little bit and just wait for (COA’s) findings.”

But Recto retorts that the documents given to COA had already been sanitized. “I think they pulled out the papers after Mei’s story and redid the whole thing,” Recto says, referring to Magsino-Lubis’s Inquirer report that questioned how ADPT could have won the contract when the company had not even been born yet at the time that the payment for it was obligated.

Asked by Newsbreak in September about public perception that he was merely running after the governor’s seat, Recto told the magazine, “I’ve been through that.” He stressed, “If my allegations happen to be true, whatever my motivations are, please forgive me.” Later that month, when the suspension order for the governor that he was expecting did not come, Recto called for a press conference in Manila and repeated the claims he makes in his graft case. Lipa Archbishop Ramon Arguelles sat beside the vice governor and was later described by newspapers as having rebuked Sanchez for “graft and corruption, the atmosphere of fear, and the spread of vice” in the province.

Sanchez has since told PCIJ that “if given a chance to meet and converse with (the Archbishop), I am certain that he would completely change his preconceived apprehensions about me.”

Sanchez does have his own set of admirers, among them Batangan‘s Sonny Atienza, who in a 2004 column praised the new governor for his “definite goals and objectives,” including a plan to rid the province of drug abuse. Atienza also cited Sanchez’s successful move to rid the bureaucracy of “nonperforming assets” and have capitol personnel practice strict observance of office hours. And, wrote Atienza, in just a matter of one or two days, Sanchez was even able to clear the roads leading to the capitol of parked jeepneys that had robbed other motorists and pedestrians of needed space.

The governor, however, seems to have had a harder time fending off all sorts of allegations, such as cheating in the 2004 elections. In response to a protest lodged by losing candidate Rosario Apacible, who placed second in a field of seven, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) began a recount of the gubernatorial votes from some 2,000 precincts across the province. Apacible alleges that Sanchez’s winning margin of some 60,000 votes was merely the result of fraud, including the use of dagdag-bawas (vote-padding and -shaving).

As of this writing, the Comelec has completed a recount of just some 600 precincts. The recount was suspended at the end of September after Comelec personnel discovered around 90 empty ballot boxes from the municipality of Padre Garcia.

FEARING FOR HER LIFE. Journalist Mei Magsino-Lubis is on the run, fleeing threats from the most powerful man in her province.

MELINDA ‘MEI’ Magsino-Lubis yearns for many things: her flower and herb garden, the sound of her husband’s voice, the kingfisher and maya birds that used to wake her up in the morning. All these she used to enjoy in her five-hectare mahogany farm on top of a hill, in the city of Batangas, around 84 km. south of Manila.

Even now her farm beckons to her like the smell of freshly brewed barako coffee. “It was paradise,” she says, “and it was my home.”

But the farm — and husband — will have to wait, because Magsino-Lubis wants to live. She is convinced that had she not fled from Batangas one night last July she would now be dead.

Magsino-Lubis is a correspondent of the Philippine Daily Inquirer for the Southern Luzon region and has been reporting on alleged irregularities in the Batangas provincial capitol. She believes her life is now in danger because her stories have angered the provincial governor, whom she has linked to questionable projects, among other things.

The governor is Armando C. Sanchez. In Senate hearings probing jueteng, he was alleged to be one of the biggest operators of the illegal numbers game in the country. He also faces a graft case filed in the Office of the Ombudsman by his vice governor. Recently, the influential Roman Catholic Church leadership in Batangas openly declared its lack of confidence in the governor. (See sidebar) Yet, while he has the demeanor of a street toughie, Sanchez does not have a reputation for resorting to violence when dealing with his perceived enemies — at least not among the general public.

But that is getting way ahead of Magsino-Lubis’s story.

Phoned warning

At around 10 in the evening of July 7 this year, Magsino-Lubis received a phone call from one of her police sources. She was told two prisoners from the provincial jail had just been released, with specific orders to kill her. She would have to leave Batangas immediately, her source said.

That same night, Magsino-Lubis said goodbye to her family and left the farm, her home for only nine months, and Batangas, where she has lived for all her 30 years. “Doon ako tinubuan ng sungay (That’s where I grew horns),” Magsino-Lubis says of her province. “But I did not have a choice (other than to leave).” In her backpack, she tucked five tops, three pairs of jeans, six pairs of underwear, four pairs of socks, documents, photographs, notepads, pens, and about P22,000 in cash. In her bones ran a cold, steady stream of fear.

Not too long ago, Magsino-Lubis had felt relatively safe, since, she says, her employer was not some small, obscure community paper, but the country’s biggest daily. “Ang yabang ko noon (I was so confident then),” she says. Now she realizes she is — and has always been — as vulnerable as all the other journalists who had been hunted down and killed in some remote town.

At least one international media watchdog has described the Philippines as “the most murderous of all” when it comes to media deaths, beating even those countries where drug lords reign or civil strife rages. Since 1986, 54 Filipino journalists have been killed in the line of duty. Most of them were broadcasters working outside Metro Manila, and at the time of their deaths reporting or commenting on irregularities in their local governments. Of these cases, only two have resulted in the convictions of the assassins, according to the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR). No mastermind has ever been found and prosecuted.

It is probably no comfort to Magsino-Lubis that elsewhere in the world, journalists who are killed often do not die while covering armed conflicts or some similar assignment. Instead, says the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ), which studied more than five years of journalists’ death records from 2000, a huge majority are murdered in retaliation for their work.

In Batangas itself, journalist Arnel Manalo was killed just last year, on August 5, when two men on a motorcycle ambushed him while he was on his way home on his jeep. He was shot twice, the bullets hitting the left side of the face and his neck.

Manalo was a correspondent for the radio station DZRH and wrote a column for the local newspapers Dyaryo Veritas and Southern Tagalog. He did not mince words in his columns, at one point calling the governor “berdugo ng kapitolyo (tyrant of the capitol)” a month before he was killed, and also saying there was an “atmosphere of fear” among capitol employees in a follow-up piece.

But Manalo was a member of the As-is barangay council as well, which was why the CMFR, in its report about his death, did not rule out political rivals as among the masterminds for his killing. Manalo’s family filed a case against someone said to be the triggerman; the case is still at the prosecutor’s office. The primary witness was another journalist, who testified that he heard the alleged triggerman planning the killing with the barangay captain, about whom Manalo had also written in the last two weeks of July 2004. The family did not file a case against the barangay captain.

Murdered ombudsman

Magsino-Lubis, however, only has to think of Guillermo Gamo to feel particularly vulnerable. They had agreed to have a meeting on May 31. Gamo, who was the Batangas provincial ombudsman, had promised to talk to her and give her documents related to what he said were anomalous deals involving provincial officials. But the day before they were supposed to meet, Gamo was killed on his way to work. According to the police, two gunmen ambushed his vehicle as it took a turn at a junction in barangay Balagtas in the capital. The gunmen fired at least 16 shots, then entered the ombudsman’s vehicle and took his briefcase before speeding off on a motorcycle. “That briefcase was for me,” says Magsino-Lubis.

In the days immediately following Gamo’s death, her sources among the capitol’s employees avoided her phone calls and stopped answering her text messages. She tried to visit Gamo’s office, but she could not even get close as employees, from a distance, shooed her away. “They were so scared,” Magsino-Lubis says, adding that she could hardly blame them. She herself does not pretend she isn’t afraid. “Tell me,” she says, “how you’d feel if you know you’re next.”

Just a few months before Gamo’s death, Magsino-Lubis had been in pure wedded bliss. She and her husband, a businessman, were married only in October last year. She had taken a couple of months off before going back to work and discovered she had a flair for farming. She even began experimenting with organic methods, and took pride in the variety of herbs and flowers she was able to grow. But she remained foremost a journalist, and she was soon back dispatching stories about agriculture, the environment, crime, and other subjects.

Her plan was, to her mind, very simple: farm in the mornings, do journalism in the afternoons, and come home in the evenings, to her husband and Mochtar, the boy they planned on having as soon as possible, a son they would name after the famous Indonesian journalist. “It was all going to be good and easy,” Magsino-Lubis says of the life she and her husband were preparing for. But those plans have had to be put on hold.

Slapped with a lawsuit

On July 5, Governor Sanchez filed an oral defamation case against Magsino-Lubis, a case the prosecutor elevated promptly to the Batangas Regional Trial Court. Sanchez accused her of being disrespectful to him during an interview at the capitol the day before. The mayors’ league also adopted a resolution declaring her persona non grata for the same reasons cited in the governor’s claim.

Magsino-Lubis, however, says it was in fact the governor who had verbally abused her while she was trying to ask him about a computerization project the capitol would be undertaking. A few minutes into the interview, she says, she had already realized that Sanchez was very agitated. She was still taking notes when the cuss words began to rain on her head. “I lost count how many times he cursed me,” she says.

Sanchez filed the oral defamation case on the same day her report about the computerization project came out in the Inquirer. The article, which Magsino-Lubis co-wrote with another reporter, discussed the P350-million project that will fully computerize Batangas’s real-property taxation system. The report raised questions about the conduct of the bidding process, and offered the theory — based on corporate and other documents — that the governor himself was the owner of the company that clinched the contract. Sanchez has since denied this.

In hindsight, Magsino-Lubis notes that her fateful interview with the governor took place while Senate witnesses were pointing to Sanchez as among those who should be summoned to the hearings to explain their supposed involvement in jueteng operations. Magsino-Lubis herself had repeatedly reported on the governor’s alleged jueteng connection, but public interest in the issue and the personalities involved was particularly high while the congressional inquiry was going on. It was not surprising then, she says, that Sanchez had become increasingly edgy about reports on him and his work at the capitol.

Still, Magsino-Lubis did not expect that the governor would file a case against her, or that the case would be brought immediately to court without any preliminary investigation. She was not even given a chance to file a counter-affidavit. Two days later, she received that dire call from one of her sources, who also informed her that she was to be finished off when she appeared before the court to post bail. “The case was meant to make me surface at a particular time and place so they could kill me,” says Magsino-Lubis.

Her editors at the Inquirer have since provided her with legal assistance, and lawyers have filed for her a motion to dismiss Sanchez’s suit.

Paranoia and distrust

As far as she can tell, the threat to her life is not the subject of any official police investigation. The governor himself, in a written reply to PCIJ’s queries, implies there is no reason for her to be on the run, since there is no one after her. A few of her colleagues in Batangas and Manila are also unsympathetic, although that seems more because Magsino-Lubis tends to come off as blowhard and rather self-righteous to some people. But Magsino-Lubis says that a day after she fled Batangas, she received another call from another source, who told her exactly what the first caller had said. She recalls telling her second informant, “If I had waited for your call, I’d be dead by now.”

She says she had no time to go to the local police to report the threat and have it put on the blotter. Besides, she says, she did not trust the Batangas police at the time. She has, however, managed to submit a letter about her situation to Task Force Gamo, which was formed to investigate the ombudsman’s death, as well as to Philippine National Police Director General Arturo Lomibao. She has been told by Task Force Gamo, however, that it lacks funds to include her case in its investigation.

Months later, Magsino-Lubis has yet to get used to life on the run. Home for a week could be a posh condominium unit owned by a godparent. For the next, a studio leased by a friend, and the next, a musty room in a youth hostel. She had practically mapped out the rest of her life with her husband, and now she cannot make plans beyond a few days. She says the paranoia she is forced to have is torture, although the greatest casualty so far has been her ability to trust people. There was one time she was enjoying a garden show with one of her “foster mothers” when a woman recognized her and asked, “‘Di ba ikaw si Mei Magsino, taga-Inquirer (Aren’t you Mei Magsino, from the Inquirer)?” The very same day she left to find another temporary sanctuary.

Another time she had engaged the security guard of the condominium where she was staying in a friendly chat. The guard mentioned a “governor” who was frequenting the building to visit a friend. Magsino-Lubis pressed the guard for more details, and was told it was a “Governor Sanchez.” Magsino-Lubis ran all the way to the unit she was occupying, grabbed her things, and was soon on the street looking for another place to stay.

But even as she runs, she has not stopped doing her job. She has been able to file a few stories since leaving Batangas, doing research, speaking to sources by phone or meeting up with them. Once she has all her materials ready, she finds an Internet café where she writes her pieces and then submits them by email. She says she has not been back in Batangas since she left the province, contrary to claims by the governor that she has even been seen window-shopping there.

Magsino-Lubis says she is tired, of course. She wants to be able to use her own name again whenever she checks into an inn, a hotel, a hostel. She longs to be able to walk the streets without having to wear a baseball cap. When she sits in a café, she wants to enjoy her cup of barako without having to keep looking at the door every time someone comes in.

For now, however, it has to be this way if she wants to be able to go back alive to Batangas and her husband. After all, the subject of her investigations is no longer the college dean who told her — the editor-in-chief of the school paper — that she would not be allowed to graduate unless she donated a karaoke to the dean’s office. This time around, whether or not she is right about who wants her dead, there is no doubt that she is up against a far more powerful figure. But Magsino-Lubis says, “Politicians can only stay so long in office. I’ll be a journalist forever.”

A jueteng past

It’s actually rather ironic that she came to writing exposés on jueteng, since her maternal grandfather was one of the game’s operators. She has vivid childhood memories of policemen knocking on their door at two in the morning to “collect.” She recalls, “My lolo would give P5,000. The police would leave with a goat in tow as well.”

Her mother was an avid jueteng player, too, placing bets every morning. But that was then. Now Magsino-Lubis’s mother no longer plays the game, concentrating instead on running the family restaurant and pig farm. Magsino-Lubis says her parents and four siblings are among her sources of courage. She says, “My family has three words for me: ‘Kaya mo ‘yan (You can do it)’.”

She is also reassured that her case is being watched closely by local organizations such as the CMFR and the Philippine Press Institute, as well as international groups like the CPJ and the International Freedom of Expression Exchange. She is hoping, she says, that letting more people know about the threats against her will lessen the chances of her being hurt.

In addition, Magsino-Lubis is able to count on the support of the Church. Lipa Archbishop Ramon Arguelles had offered her refuge months ago, suggesting she go to the Canossa convent in Lipa. But Magsino-Lubis, while grateful for the gesture, did not want to be cloistered. “I wouldn’t be able to work there,” she says. The mere thought of being unable to practice her profession is a nightmare for her, since she says she has tons and tons to write about.

And write she will, although she wishes that soon she will be able to do so back home in Batangas, in her farm, with her husband and the birds that greet them every morning.

Jueteng scandals have rocked two Philippine presidents, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. [photo credits: Ey Acasio/Manila Standard Today]

JUETENG has deep roots in Philippine village life. Its network of collectors come from the community, so do the cabos or chiefs who supervise them. It has existed for more than 100 years, and before the recent police crackdown, millions were betting on the illicit numbers game everyday.

At the village level, jueteng is not seen as a syndicated crime, but as popular entertainment and distraction. Bettors make their wagers based on dreams, omens, and premonitions. In jueteng, numbers take on a mystical quality: the heavens send signs and favor those who read them well.

Joe Galvez’s photos on this page show how jueteng bets are collected and added up in a small village somewhere in Central Luzon. There is nothing extraordinary about these scenes. Jueteng is in the realm of the everyday: to the plain folk who wager a few pesos on the game, it is both ordinary and magical. At the national level, though, jueteng is fodder for political scandal and ammunition that can be used to oust presidents.

Finally, an attempt at an explanation. Some readers may be confused about our size. This year, i Report has come out in two sizes: the book-size version for No.1 and No. 2 and the magazine-size version you hold in your hand. The reason is simple: we started out thinking that we could stray away from the news and focus on long-term social, political, and lifestyle trends. But Gloriagate proved us so wrong. The tempo of the times required that we keep our readers abreast of current events.

This is why we are giving up the less timebound, book-size i in favor of the more current, newsmagazine format. Our dealers have also asked that we keep to this size, as it is more visible on the newsstands and easier to sell. Our apologies for the confusion.

In this issue:

• Grassroots game
• Jekyll-and-Hyde campaign
• Presidential makeover
• The Vice President: The man who would be President
• Focus on the Filipino youth
  • Finding space
  • The perils of generation sex
  • The business of beauty
  • Machos in the mirror
  • Growing up female and Muslim
  • Virtually yours

CONTROVERSIAL FAMILY. The Arroyo couple hears mass with their children (from extreme left) Dato, Mikey, and Luli. [photos courtesy of Malaya]

FROM overpriced highways to secret bank accounts, to gambling lords and thoroughbred horses, controversies have hounded the Arroyo administration long before wiretapped conversations implying election fraud hogged the headlines. And it is not only the president who has more than once been asked to account for charges of improper behavior; so too have husband Mike, eldest child Mikey, and brother-in-law Ignacio Arroyo.

IMPSA

Four days after it assumed office, the Arroyo administration approved the awarding of a controversial $470-million contract to the Argentine firm IMPSA (Industrias Metalurgicas Pescarmona Sociedad Anonima) to rehabilitate a hydroelectric plant in Laguna. Justice Secretary Hernando Perez was later accused of demanding and receiving $2 million dollars from ex-Rep. Mark Jimenez, who brokered the deal. Jimenez said he wired the amount to the account of Ernest Escaler in Hong Kong on Feb. 23, 2001 from his bank in Uruguay. The former congressman was later extradited to the United States, where he had to serve a two-year jail term for federal election fraud and tax evasion.

San Francisco

From the time she was first elected senator in 1992 up to 2004, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had failed to declare in her sworn Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth the properties her husband, Jose Miguel ‘Mike’ Arroyo, bought in San Francisco through his California-based LTA Realty Corp. In 2003, Newsbreak reported that Mr. Arroyo acquired, resold, and managed at least five properties with a total value of at least $7.1 million in the Bay City from 1992 to 2000. The First Couple said they bought the properties in trust for Mike Arroyo’s younger brother, Ignacio or Iggy, now a congressman.

Bong Pineda

President Arroyo has been questioned about her personal connection with alleged jueteng boss Bong Pineda: She is godmother to one of Pineda’s sons. She has denied any impropriety, saying she doesn’t associate with Pineda or his crowd. In an interview with Time magazine in 2001, she said that when she was asked to be ninang, she sought and received counsel from Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin. Recalled Arroyo: “Cardinal Sin said, as a Christian, if I am asked to be a godmother, it is my Christian duty, because the sins of the father are not the sins of the son.”

Macapagal Boulevard

In the middle of 2002, Sulpicio Tagud Jr., then board director of the Public Estates Authority (PEA), blew the whistle on what he said was the overpricing by over P600 million of the construction of the 5.1-kilometer President Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard at the Manila Bay reclamation area. First approved during the Estrada administration, contracts for constructing the highway were allocated to three companies: Shoemart Inc. (one portion), DM Wenceslao (one portion), and Jesusito D. Legaspi Construction (JDLC for the remaining three portions). A series of supplemental contracts with JDLC were later approved by the PEA board under the Arroyo administration, increasing the original approved cost of their section of the highway. Tagud did his investigations and found that while the SM group of companies constructed its part of the boulevard at a cost of P54,000 per lineal meter, JDLC built its section at P302,000 per lineal meter.

Piatco

The construction of the 1.1-km-long, four-storey Terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) by the Philippine International Air Terminals Co. (Piatco) has been riddled with controversies. Some of these were inherited by the Arroyo administration, while others were allegedly of its own doing. In May 2003 opposition Sen. Edgardo Angara accused Malacañang of trying to extort, through the Villaraza law office, some $20 million from Fraport, the German firm with a 30-percent stake in Piatco, in exchange for legal favor.

But the Piatco scandal is a long running one. It figured prominently during the confirmation hearings for Arroyo-appointed Transportation Secretary Pantaleon Alvarez in 2002. Alvarez was alleged to have obtained an overpriced subcontract for one of the public works projects related to the airport terminal. In exchange, Alvarez, while transportation secretary, was reported to have given the firm “onerous” advantages. Piatco was also accused of paying since June 2001 huge sums of money to a public relations consultant, Alfonso S. Liongson, an associate of the First Gentleman, for getting signatures of officials for either permits or supplementary agreements to its contract with the government. Liongson reportedly used part of the money to bribe officials for their signatures. The terminal was finally mothballed in 2003 when President Arroyo revoked Piatco’s build-operate-transfer contract. In December 2004 the government took over the airport, after the Supreme Court affirmed the contract’s revocation. It remains unopened.

Mikey’s horses

Newsbreak in August 2003 broke the news on a plan of presidential son Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo to import 32 thoroughbred horses from Melbourne, Australia. The then Pampanga vice governor, now a congressman, denied the allegation. He admitted, though, that he was in the horse-trade business. The young Arroyo owns Franchino Farms along with cousin Franchino Pamintuan and friend Ralph Mondragon.

Jose Pidal

On Aug. 18, 2003, opposition senator Panfilo Lacson accused First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo of money laundering for supposedly siphoning off at least P321 million in campaign funds and contributions and putting these in a secret bank account under the fictitious name Jose Pidal and in three other accounts using the names of his aides. Among the “donors,” Lacson said, was then Rep. Mark Jimenez who contributed a total of P8 million. Lacson also accused Mr. Arroyo of having an affair with his accountant, Victoria Toh. Following Lacson’s allegations, Mr. Arroyo’s younger brother, now congressman Ignacio or Iggy, came forward to say he is Jose Pidal.

Agri fund

The First Gentleman was linked in May 2004 to the alleged diversion of P728 million from the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani program to President Arroyo’s campaign war chest in the form of development assistance funds to local government units. Then Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn I. Bolante, Mr. Arroyo’s classmate at the Ateneo de Manila University and a colleague at the Rotary Club District 3830, cleared the First Gentleman of involvement. Bolante was tasked to oversee the implementation of the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani program at the time.

Philhealth cards

Six weeks before the May 2004 elections, two lawyers from PRO-CON(stitution) filed a disqualification case against President Arroyo before the Comelec, saying she was behind the enhanced Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office’s Greater Medicare Access or GMA program, which they claimed was meant to prop up her candidacy. Earlier, another PRO-CON lawyer filed a criminal suit, also before the Comelec, against then PCSO chief Maria Livia “Honeygirl” de Leon and PhilHealth president (now Health Secretary) Francisco T. Duque III for vote buying, intervention of a public officer, using public funds for election purposes and using banned election propaganda. Public funds were allegedly spent to enroll families in PhilHealth for one year to induce the enrollees to vote for President Arroyo. The premium cost of P1,200 for each family member was chargeable to PhilHealth and the PCSO.?The PhilHealth identification cards bore the President’s picture and the name. Their distribution coincided with the start of the election campaign.

Las Vegas suite

The First Gentleman was the subject of another controversy over his alleged use of a $20,000-a-night suite at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada during the boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Mexico’s Erick Morales last March 19. The story first appeared as a blind item in the March 23 column of Inquirer sports columnist Recah Trinidad, who wrote that a “heavyweight backer” of Pacquiao had stayed in a $20,000-suite at the MGM Grand. Mr. Arroyo would later say he did not see anything corrupt about accepting the generous offer of a free luxury suite from the hotel, arguing that his stature as the husband of a head of state entitled him to such perks.

Jueteng (again)

In Senate hearings on the illegal numbers game that began in May 2005, jueteng operators and bagmen said the President’s husband Mike, her son Mikey, and her brother-in-law Ignacio or Iggy were among those who received monthly payoffs from gambling lords. The payoffs supposedly ranged from P500,000 to P1 million. One of the witnesses, businesswoman Sandra Cam, testified that in December 2004, she personally delivered the cash to Mikey (in a gift-wrapped package) and Iggy (in an envelope) at the House of Representatives. The deliveries were supposedly made on the instructions of retired Chief Supt. Restituto Mosqueda, former police director for Bicol and alleged protector of jueteng operations in Luzon. On June 8, the President ordered the Department of Justice to investigate her son and brother-in-law, saying, “Nobody in my family or kin are above the law and no investigator or prosecutor could fear to uphold the law against them. I will stand for justice no matter who gets hurt.” The Office of the Ombudsman has since taken over the DOJ investigation. Both Mikey and Iggy, meanwhile, have sued Cam for libel.

AS OFFICIALS of private high schools and colleges across Metro Manila grapple with the growing problem of sports gambling among their students, one mother has tried to take comfort in the fact that her teenaged son, unlike most of his classmates, has shown no interest in placing any bet. But she is nevertheless upset, she says, because the boy sees nothing wrong with what his classmates are doing.

“These kids don’t even realize gambling is against the law,” says the mother.

Other parents and school officials are similarly concerned that the current popularity of sports gambling among students is a mere indicator of a larger crisis. This means there can be no simple solution for it, but may need a multi-pronged approach.

“I think this is a wake-up call,” says a school administrator. “This is a deeper problem. We have been sending the wrong signals to our children.”

Indeed, experts like clinical psychiatrist Jay Madellon Carcereny say that children lured into gambling are victims of the distorted values imparted by their elders, including their parents and even public officials.

Investigations done by some schools support this, with their data indicating that the parents of many of the bettor-students are gamblers themselves, and either frequent casinos or regularly play mahjongg.

One parent also confides that she personally knows people who course their bets on basketball endings through their children. An anti-crime organization, meanwhile, says the parents of a female high school student were so happy when they found out the daughter won P300,000 that they encouraged her to keep on betting.

“It can be self-defeating because the values (taught in school) are not taught at home,” laments a school official. “They’re loosening the nuts that we’re trying to tighten.”

School administrators say the situation is complicated all the more by confusing signals from the government, which has legalized some forms of gambling, including sports betting.

“Is gambling good or bad? The message from government is, if it is authorized, it is okay, it is legal. When it is not authorized, it is bad, it is illegal,” says a frustrated and confused educator.

The state, through the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation or Pagcor, is into the operation of games of chance to generate funds for development projects and to fight illegal gambling. Last year, Pagcor ventured into sports betting, describing the wager as “a way of life” to many Filipinos.

Estimating the gaming market in the country to be over P100 billion annually, Pagcor launched in April 2003 “Basketball Jackpot,” a betting game based on the scores of the PBA games, and is set to launch this year “TeleSabong,” an online betting system where the game results are based on an outcome or series of outcomes of a four-cock derby.

But many Metro Manila private school officials fear that their students are getting introduced to the gambling “way of life” far too early.

To be sure, there are schools that still refuse to acknowledge that there is a problem, dismissing the bets placed by their students as too small to be bothered over. There are also those that say since the students do not place their bets while on campus, the matter should not be their concern, even if the payment of winnings and collection of debts often take place inside school premises.

Other schools, however, have come up with tougher rules against gambling inside and near their vicinity, and are consulting each other on how to control and combat what they see as a scourge. Two schools have also gone as far as revising their student’s handbook so that even gambling-related activities such as payment of winnings and bet collection now have penalties.

Another school has banned cell phones inside the campus and put a P500 cap on the amount of money students can bring to school. In enforcing the new rule, the school conducts random searches among its students.

In a series of letters, the school also asked parents not to “encourage, participate in, or show any toleration for gambling.” Parents were advised not to pay any debt incurred from gambling and to disclose any gambling-related information that they know. Students and parents who come forward to admit guilt and share information have been assured of “compassionate treatment.”

In addition, parents were alerted that April 15 to June is the peak season for gambling because of the NBA playoffs. (Cell-phone firms send out infotexts to subscribers to announce that real time information-scores, standings, schedules-about the National Basketball Association playoffs are available through SMS.)

Starting this school year, the school has decided to include in its curriculum a discussion on the various aspects of gambling inside the classroom. Teaching modules on the subject prepared by faculty members would be used in the class during homeroom periods.

Aside from conducting investigations, schools have invited experts to discuss the ill effects of gambling and outline potential solutions to the problem.

But educators admit they are stumped over how to pinpoint and punish the bookies among their students. When one school tried to tell the parents of one teenager that their son may have been taking money wagers from his classmates, for instance, the reply was downright hostile: The parents threatened to sue if the school could not produce any evidence.

Schools admit hard evidence is difficult to come by, and those placing bets are unlikely to speak up.

Social worker Eva Lawas of the Department of Social Welfare and Development notes that even students who are expected to know better — the class topnotchers — can be tempted to gamble.

“Being academically prepared is different from being emotionally stable,” she comments. “You could be the brightest child but you can be the weakest in terms of emotions.”

A school official observes as well, “It is also this consumerism. Students who win treat everybody and buy many things so others envy them and would want to strike big time on their own.”

In truth, there are those who suspect that the bookies’ practice of handing a student’s winnings in front of everyone in class is part of an enticement campaign to hook others in. The P300,000 winner mentioned earlier, for instance, was handed her check in class. The following week, her family bought a new Hyundai Starex van, which was partly financed by her winnings.

Lawas agrees with clinical psychiatrist Carcereny that anyone addicted to gambling could become addicted to drugs and other vices later in life.

But Lawas and Carcereny also say this should not be taken as a foregone conclusion. The first step in correcting the problem, they say, is for the child and the parents to acknowledge that there is one.

Lawas says that at some point, parents must also be able to find the courage to report and file a complaint before the proper authorities.

“The government cannot do anything kung tsismis lang (if it’s just a rumor),” she says. “The government can do something if it is written and filed accordingly.”

In some places, however, illegal gambling, including sports gambling, is no secret to the police, but authorities have not lifted a finger to stop it because they are allegedly in the financier’s pocket, says Sam, a bookie who collects game-ending bets for a financier in Manila.

Still Sam claims that collectors like him are not completely out of the woods. He says some policemen would still wait and pick up bookie collectors while on their way to deliver money to the financier to make a quick extra buck.

Financiers negotiate for the release of the collectors once informed of the “arrest,” Sam says. Negotiations allegedly take place while the police take the collector to a “cruise” in the city.

The “negotiating” rate is about P5,000 if the collector has not been hauled off to the police station, but goes up to P15,000 to P20,000 if he has, according to Sam.

So far, however, Education Secretary Edilberto de Jesus says he has not heard about the problem of gambling in private schools. He adds that as a matter of policy, the Department of Education, which exercises only oversight functions over private schools, allows these institutions to solve their own problems.

“They’re private anyway, and we also have a lot to work to do with the public schools,” de Jesus points out.

Some of that work, however, may also involve keeping public school students away from gambling.

A survey done by the Citizens’ Action Against Crime-Movement for the Restoration of Peace and Order (CAAC-MRPO) showed that in poorer schools, students pool their meager baon (lunch money) just to meet the minimum bet of P50. Sometimes the whole class participates with students chipping in P1 each. Just like the students in exclusive schools, the children bet on the games of the NBA, as well as those of the homegrown professional league.

Sam the bookie confirms that some of his clients are minors — “about 15 years old.” He says he accepts the youngsters’ bets because “that’s still money.”

Warning Signs

Some schools have issued guidelines for parents who suspect their child may be into sports gambling. They say parents may want to watch out for:

• Increasing cell phone bill (infotext)
• Text message that states the name of a team (odds or winning team betting), or the word high or low (for high/low betting)
• Increased deposit or withdrawal from bank accounts
• Sudden loss or gain of money
• Frequent use of internet: access to sites for odds and other information
• Mysterious phone calls: use of coded “gambling language”
• Unusual, deep and overreaction to results of game
• Loss of jewelry, watches, cell phones
• Purchase of new and expensive things
• Borrowing money from family members and friends
• Stealing, fighting, threatening
• Influence of relatives (siblings, cousins) who are involved in gambling

The gambling involves betting on the scores of local and U.S. basketball games (PBA, NBA, and UAAP). The bets are placed via text messages. This has been going for years now, but came to the attention of school authorities and anti-crime groups only in 2002. Some schools have taken measures to stem the gambling, but denial and refusal to acknowledge the extent of the problem as well as the resistance of parents have made it difficult to stamp it out. In addition, some parents encourage their children to gamble and see no reason why this should be stopped.

FIFTEEN-year-old Robert is every mother’s ideal son. He is responsible, obedient, kind, and generally well-behaved-traits that did not escape his classmates who chose him as class president.

About a month ago, though, Robert’s mother, Sophia, noticed that he had become unusually quiet and withdrawn. “I thought he had been jilted,” recalls Sophia. “And then his elder brother told me that my son had a problem and that I should to talk to him.”

And what a problem her golden boy had: Robert had run up P90,000 in debt after betting on the results of the U.S.-based National Basketball Association (NBA) games through a bookie. A classmate, who acted as debt collector, was now harassing Robert with persistent phone calls to his home, as well as calls and text messages on his mobile. The classmate would later even tell Sophia, who had answered the phone at home, that Robert must pay — or else.

Robert’s parents paid his gambling debts with money from his savings account; his classmate collected the P90,000 check from Sophia’s office and cashed it himself.

For Robert and his family, that was the end of that. But sports gambling — specifically betting on basketball games — is still going on strong in many private high schools and colleges in Metro Manila, and there are indications that more and more students are being drawn in. And while the bets start as low as P10, school administrators and parents who have been alerted to the practice say some youngsters who are still learning algebra have managed to rack up six-figure debts.

An anti-crime organization also cites the case of a female student of an exclusive college in the Pasig-San Juan-Mandaluyong area who lost almost P20 million after trying to recover previous losses. Unable to pay her debts and repeatedly threatened by the bookie, her family was forced to transfer residence; the student had to drop out from school.

No one is sure when such serious sports gambling began invading schools in the metropolis. There are indications that it is a fairly recent phenomenon, although that cannot be ascertained because those involved are usually very discreet. Anti-crime activist Teresita Ang See says the schools and parents of the students who have gotten entangled in sports gambling would rather keep silent because of the possible stigma of a scandal, as well as fear of reprisals from those behind the operations.

But it has apparently become so rampant that in one high school, only three students in a class of 40 have yet to place any bets.

So far, no one seems to have gotten in touch with law enforcers to tackle the problem. But some school administrators have undertaken independent investigations, and one of them has learned that at least five groups of syndicates are handling separate operations in one district in Manila alone.

“They (schools and parents) are very scared to be seen as the ones who blew the whistle because this is like the livelihood of syndicates,” says Ang See, who heads the Citizens’ Action Against Crime-Movement for the Restoration of Peace and Order (CAAC-MRPO).

In fact, aside from Ang See, only a social worker, a clinical psychiatrist, and Education Secretary Edilberto de Jesus agreed to be identified in this series. The rest, including Robert and his parents, requested anonymity or a complete change of their names.

Ang See says at least two of the students that the CAAC-MRPO talked to had their necks squeezed tight while they were being threatened. A school administrator of an elite high school also says that there has been a story going around about a college student who was allegedly killed for trying to put one over the gambling syndicate. The administrator says although there is no evidence that the story is true, it could only have strengthened the resolve of parents not to report cases of students involved in gambling to authorities.

An official of another school recounts that one student’s gambling travails came to the administration’s attention only after her bookie’s “friends” went to the school and harassed the child by tailing her car. Barely in her teens, the high school student had bet and lost more than P900,000 and was receiving death threats because her accumulated debts were due. The collector even paid her a visit at home, accompanied by four men who said they were policemen.

Her school decided to do some sleuthing and found out that the bookie was actually also one of its students, who was in turn connected to bookies based in a university in Manila. It also traced the operation to a gambling syndicate based in Binondo. Nonetheless, the school administrator advised the gambler-student’s parents not to pay the bookie. The official was asked to lay off the case; the bookie was paid in installments.

School officials, parents, and students interviewed for this article say that there is usually one bookie-cum-debt collector per “active” school. The bookie is a student himself, and may have other students under him who act as his runners or his dummies whenever there is a threat of being found out by school authorities. In some schools, the bookies are the varsity players.

Most of the time, the accumulated bets are wagered or forwarded to another bookie until it reaches the “banker,” or the financier. Bookies are often clueless about the identity of the banker since the transactions are done through phone calls.

Bets are placed through the bookie-student’s cell phone, which is usually equipped with GPS (global positioning system) that enables the syndicate to trace the whereabouts of its campus bagman with ease.

Students say basketball games are the best to wager on, especially those of the NBA, although bettors also like games in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) and the inter-school leagues.

Bets range from P10 to hundreds of thousands, depending on the cap set by the bookie. Students determined to place bets higher than the cap imposed by their school’s bookie have been known to approach a “friendlier” bookie in a nearby school.

Bettors are not required to produce the money outright when placing a wager. They pay only when they lose. Winners give up at least 10 percent of their winnings to the bookie as commission. Win-loss transactions are settled weekly on a designated “payday.” In some schools, for example, losers pay the bookies on Mondays while winners receive their prize money on Tuesdays.

Bets are accepted once bookies inform bettors through text about the handicapping system to be applied in a particular game. The handicapping system, or the point spreads assigned to specific NBA teams, are supposed to level the betting playing field between the two opposing teams in the contest. The team perceived to have lesser chances of winning is given additional points.

Bookies follow the point spreads assigned by Las Vegas handicappers. This information is usually posted in the Internet.

Betting starts about an hour and a half before each game. For NBA games, that is 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. while for PBA games it is 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Because the betting takes place after school hours, some school administrators have argued that the problem should no longer be their concern.

The most popular bets are “happy ending” — betting on the ending of the game’s final score — or simply picking the game’s winner. But Allen, a student in a prestigious university, says several other types of bets could be placed in one basketball game.

“Sobrang dami ang puwedeng pustahan,” says Allen, who has graduated from being a bettor to a bookie. Aside from the final score, he says, one could place bets on quarter and half-time scores. “There’s also the total score of each team, or you could combine that with a half-time score,” he says. “Then there are the points players make. Let’s say Shaquille O’Neal, 24 points. You can bet if he will make over or under 24 points in that game.”

Allen bets and collects wagers only on the NBA because he thinks PBA results are sometimes rigged. He is also somewhat of a big-league bookie since the minimum bet he will take is P1,000.

The highest pooled bet that Allen has received for a game is P200,000, including his own wager. A resident of a plush Makati subdivision, he says he does not take the usual 10-percent bookie’s cut because “I don’t need the money.”

“They are all my friends,” he adds. “I don’t want to make money from them. I am here for the challenge, the entertainment, and the benefits because I always win.”

A big basketball fan, Allen religiously analyzes the performance of NBA teams and makes sure that he is updated about its players, particularly reports about injuries, trades, even the months when star players and teams are said to perform well. “You can predict trends,” he says confidently. “You just have to check nba.com every day.”

As a rule, Allen deals only with friends because he wants to transact business with “credible and trustworthy” people. He says he has refused bets because he did not want friends to sink into a quagmire of debt. Although he says he has a P500,000 capital, he imposes a P20,000 limit on each bettor. He accepts wagers higher than P20,000 only when the bettor shows the color of his money.

Allen says he has encountered bettors who had already lost more than P100,000 but were still raring to go. “They’re junkies,” he says. “So they’d give their car keys or their car’s certificate of registration to their bookie and then try to recoup their losses throughout the week or month.”

He says he knows people who have lost their cars that way. He also says he knows of students who have ended up selling “everything they own” — clothes, shoes, appliances that their parents won’t notice as missing — to be able to pay their debts to bookies. He confirms that there are bookies who menace bettors unable to cough up the money quickly enough.

Allen himself began betting on basketball endings when he was a high school senior. But he thinks high school students and sports gambling could be a volatile mix.

“When you’re in high school, you’re very passionate and aggressive, and you wouldn’t be able to resist trying to recoup your losses,” he says. “There’s little self-control and then you really have no source of income. So I advise them not to bet regularly, maybe just once in a while.”

But experts say gambling is addicting, and that once one starts betting, it is hard not to keep placing wagers. Says clinical psychiatrist Jay Madellon Carcereny: “If I win, I’d want to bet again. But if I lose, the more I’d want to make another bet because I’d want to regain what I lost.”

In the last nine months, Carcereny has handled at least 10 cases of minors — some as young as 11 years old — addicted to gambling. She says that all except one of her patients (or more precisely, their parents) paid their gambling debts. Their stories were all the same: They had placed their bets through a classmate who later harassed them when they were unable to cover their debts.

But the one who eventually could not pay has had the saddest ending so far: According to Carcereny, the student has stopped schooling and is now in hiding. And into drugs.

“It’s a case of cross-addiction,” says Carcereny. “There’s this behavior that you want to let out but you can’t. You’re looking for excitement, the thrill, but since you can’t gamble anymore, drugs are it.”