Jueteng Republic

When it comes to receiving payoffs from the illegal numbers game, Joseph Estrada is not alone.
by Sheila S. Coronel


DURING the Christmas season, all the roads of Lubao, Pampanga lead to the fortress-like compound of Rodolfo 'Bong' Pineda, the biggest jueteng lord in all of Central Luzon, and his wife Lilia, the mayor of this sleepy, nondescript town of rice farmers and assorted tradespeople just an hour's drive from Manila.

In an annual rite that has become a tradition in Lubao, hundreds of residents line up for the bags of goodies that the Pinedas give their constituents every year. The schoolteachers get a leg of ham, corned beef and other canned goods. The ordinary barriofolk take home gift bags containing dressed chicken, sardines, rice and noodles.

Such generosity ensures that the Pinedas have loyal and enduring grassroots support in their hometown. But like everywhere else where jueteng thrives, Bong Pineda's gambling operation cannot exist without the tolerance—and active protection—of local and national officials, the police, even the Church, which is a beneficiary of jueteng contributions.

Such protection has a price. "In 1995, we estimated that (every year) about P2.5 billion (of jueteng money) goes to intelihensiya, the word used for bribe money," said Parañaque Rep. Roilo Golez, head of the House committee on public order and safety. "Bribe money that lands in the hands of police officers, local officials and maybe other officials—judges, prosecutors, etc.—who have an active part in controlling, and at the same time protecting, jueteng."

A grassroots-based gaming operation, jueteng is probably the biggest and most public racket in this country. Although illegal, the game is hardly kept secret. Bets are openly taken by a network of cobradores (collectors) who report to cabos or headmen. The jueteng operators are well known in their areas by citizens, local officials and the police.

It doesn't matter that every other year or so, Congress conducts an inquiry into why jueteng persists. Names of jueteng operators are reported in the newspapers, and the police oblige with well-publicized raids on gambling operations. Charges are even filed—several are pending in court against Bong Pineda, for example, but none of these ever prosper. At most, a few cabos land in jail and are eventually bailed out (penalties for jueteng are light, a maximum of six months in prison or a fine of P1,000).

The charges made in October by Ilocos Sur Governor Luis 'Chavit' Singson that President Joseph Estrada received over P500 million in gambling payoffs show just how far up the layers of jueteng protection go. If Singson is right, Estrada did what none of his predecessors has done: systematize and centralize jueteng collections in the Office of the President. It was a move as audacious as it was cynical, and it shows Estrada's keen appreciation that the presidency—with its powers and prerogatives—can be the biggest racket in the country. And that the President can play The Godfather.

JOSEPH Estrada should not be blamed for thinking that he could get away with being the lord of all jueteng lords. The milieu from which he sprung is old-style, small-town Pinoy politics where the mayor is boss and takes a cut from a variety of illicit activities that takes place in his area, whether it is smuggling, gambling or illegal logging. In this milieu, the mayor and the police, which is under his control, provide protection for illegal activities, ensuring that the syndicates are able to operate with a minimum of harassment from officials and the law. Hardly ever is anyone called to account - not the mayor, or the police, or the criminals. The operative word is impunity: Everyone knows, but no one is caught.

Jueteng provides the most advanced form of this network of complicity. In many towns and villages, jueteng, politics and daily life are so inextricably intertwined. Gambling contributions fill up campaign coffers, and it is not unusual for jueteng operators themselves to be members of political clans, which use gambling profits to build a network of patronage—the kind of do-gooding and gift-giving that the Pinedas have honed to a fine art.

For sure, Lilia Pineda is not an exception as far as this marriage of jueteng and politics goes. In 1995, Rep. Bonifacio Gillego exposed Sorsogon Governor Raul Lee as a "notorious jueteng operator and maintainer." In fact, Lee went as far as naming his own brother-in-law as provincial police chief. San Rafael, Bulacan Mayor Jesus Y. Viceo is listed by the Philippine National Police (PNP) as a jueteng operator in his province. Chavit Singson's own clan in Ilocos Sur is known to have jueteng connections. Both he and his brother and bitter rival Jose or Bonito Singson have been named in police intelligence reports as jueteng operators in their province. Police reports also pointed to Eric's congresswoman-wife Grace as a jueteng protector. Similarly, the Sorianos of San Carlos, Pangasinan are both in jueteng and local politics.

Even a family as steeped in politics and landed wealth as the Cojuangcos of Tarlac have not been spared jueteng allegations: Former Tarlac Rep. Jose Cojuangco Jr., former President Corazon C. Aquino's brother, has been implicated in a 1995 House hearing as intervening on behalf of jueteng operators, while police reports allege that jueteng in the province continued unchecked when his wife, the glamorous socialite Margarita 'Tingting' Cojuangco, was Tarlac governor from 1995 to 1998.

Even before Chavit Singson made his scandalous charges about Estrada, there were already indications that jueteng money was playing a role in campaigns for national office—hence, the well-publicized charges that Vice-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has received campaign contributions from Pineda.

Given the pervasiveness of jueteng, it is not surprising that some of the politicians who oppose Estrada are tarred with the same brush that has smeared the President's reputation and brought him so close to losing his post. While this does not exonerate Estrada or deflate the dimensions of his alleged sins, it puts Erap in context as the logical culmination of a political system warped by corruption, patronage and illicit money. If Singson's charges against him are proven true, it can be said that Estrada was able to demand pay-offs from jueteng and amass so much money in so short a time because the system allowed him to.

THE PRESIDENTIAL system of government, which gives the President vast powers, is one that is easily abused by a reckless head of state. Many Filipinos may now view Estrada as a disaster, but his transgressions went by largely unnoticed until October because the system of accountabilities failed and the institutions designed to check on the excesses of a powerful executive—such as Congress and opposition political parties—were in the President's thrall.

Had Singson not told his tale, Estrada would likely have got away with receiving, the governor alleged, P32 to 35 million a month in jueteng collections. The story, as it is told, is straight out of a Mario Puzo novel. In August 1998, barely two months after he had assumed the presidency, Estrada called Singson, Bong Pineda and his friend Charlie 'Atong' Ang, to a meeting at his Greenhills home. There, said Singson, Pineda was instructed to deliver the President's share of jueteng protection money to Ang, who had promised Estrada that he could strong-arm the gambling operators to deliver. Two months later, Ang and Estrada had a falling out, and Singson was asked to take over as collector of jueteng payoffs. A ledger of the collections of, and disbursements from, the bribe money was kept by Yolanda Ricaforte, whose husband is tourism undersecretary and a presidential pal.

The ledger, which Singson submitted to the Senate, shows collections from 22 Luzon provinces, Iloilo province, Metro Manila and Olongapo City. By the governor's estimate, the total jueteng take is about P50 million a day, with the President taking a three-percent share of total collections. Singson said he collected the money and delivered it to Estrada either at the President's home or at Malacañang Palace.

This scheme shows an intimate knowledge of the dynamics of jueteng and the layers of protection that it engenders. If Singson is to be believed, this is the first time ever that a President so systematically collected jueteng take. It was his task, Singson said, to make sure the likes of Pineda, who controlled jueteng in Pangasinan, Pampanga, Cavite and Bataan, delivered the President's cut. For Quezon, the operator was Charing Magbuhos and in Batangas, Arman Sanchez—Singson said he collected from them, too.

In Bicol, Antonio G. Dy Prieto, the presidential assistant for the region, took charge of turning over the collections to Singson. In Bulacan, said the governor, the jueteng collector was Estrada's own son, San Juan Mayor Jose 'Jinggoy' Ejercito, who is pals with Viceo, the mayor who supposedly controls jueteng in the province. There were smaller, decentralized jueteng operations in Metro Manila and guerrilla operations in Laguna and elsewhere, but as the ledger shows, collections were sometimes made from these places too, in amounts ranging from P150,000 to P250,000 every 15 days, compared to the P1 to P1.5 million that was turned over by provinces where jueteng operations were more established and regular.

The list of jueteng operators that Singson drew up jibes with information obtained in congressional hearings held in 1995 and June 2000 as well as with police intelligence reports. His estimate of jueteng collections—P50 million a day or P18 billion a year- was also the estimate Golez made in a House hearing in 1995. Golez's estimate then of how much of this amount goes to intelihensiya paid to police, military and civilian officials ranges from P2.5 billion to P6 billion, or anywhere from 14 to 30 percent of total collections.

Singson claims no other President has so systematically profited from illegal gambling as Estrada has. Marcos, he said, did not bother: The collections from jueteng were too paltry in comparison to the vast amounts that could be made elsewhere, such as cuts from foreign loans or commissions from big government contracts. But then Marcos had grander ambitions, and although he, too, had small-town roots, he was not quite as immersed in small-town politics as Estrada was.

TO ERAP, the presidency is the mayoralty writ large. The mayor usually has the police by the balls. Similarly, Estrada treats the PNP as if it were the protection arm of Malacañang. Thus, when Atong Ang, with the President's blessings and with the endorsement of the Philippine Gaming Corporation (Pagcor), introduced the "Bingo-2 Ball" as a "legal" substitute for jueteng, the PNP obliged by raiding recalcitrant jueteng operators.

In many small towns, it is not unusual for the police to act as the mayor's goons, protecting illegal activities from which the local chief executive takes a cut as well as putting the squeeze on rival syndicates. In part this is because the local chief of police, who is chosen by the mayor, owes a debt of gratitude to the official who nominated him. In addition, the police take for themselves a chunk of the intelihensiya pie. Similarly, whoever becomes the PNP chief owes the President his appointment and is careful to curry favor with the appointing power.

The President also names the boards of government corporations, including Pagcor, whose board is so stocked with Erap appointees that it has more members than what its charter allows. Moreover, the President wields influence over the boards he appointed, so he can also have some say on how government corporations run their affairs. Thus, in Pagcor, the board merely looked away when Estrada put his friend Ang in charge of jai-alai and Bingo 2-Ball operations.

What Ang did was to assign Bingo 2-Ball franchises to some of the existing jueteng operators in different provinces and to award his firm a hefty 27 percent share of total collections from the gambling operations. Singson claims that Ang was fronting for Estrada in the firm and that Bingo 2-Ball was a scheme for the President and his cohorts to grab for themselves a bigger share of gambling profits.

Whatever the case, Ang began Bingo 2-Ball without the benefit of a law—gambling franchises are awarded by Congress. He did not even have a contract as a Pagcor "consultant" nor were the franchises bidded out. He was able to run roughshod over established procedures simply because he had the President's backing.

By October, several Bingo 2-Ball franchises had been awarded mainly to favored jueteng operators. In effect, Ang had legalized jueteng without waiting for Congress to enact legislation on the matter; he had also effected a scheme to siphon off to his company the share of the pie that once went to intelihensiya. (In fact, the PNP was already negotiating with Pagcor for the police to "legally" have a cut from these funds to make up for the intelihensiya that police officers would have to forego once jueteng was legalized. The logic was that if the money came from the PNP itself, police officers need not feel they were beholden to gambling operators.)

While Ang was working on Bingo 2-Ball, Chavit Singson was feeling the pinch. In June, police raided gambling dens in Ilocos Sur and found a "blue book" that detailed jueteng payoffs in 34 towns in the province. Police officials said that among those supposedly listed in the blue book, although in coded form, were the names of mayors and police officers who were Singson supporters. PNP Chief Panfilo Lacson went so far as to write House Speaker Manuel Villar and Interior Secretary Alfredo Lim to say that the Ilocos Sur governor was protecting jueteng operations in Northern Luzon.

Interestingly enough, the same blue book produced by the police supposedly also contained the name of Rep. Grace Singson, wife of the governor's jueteng and political rival, Eric. Yet despite this, the Bingo 2-Ball franchise was given to Eric Singson, himself a former congressman. The move, in effect, cut Chavit Singson off from potentially lucrative gambling profits. Police also raided the properties of suspected smugglers - some of them supporters of the governor - whom they accused of coddling the profitable trade in contraband appliances and motorcycles in Northern Luzon. In typical gangland fashion, Chavit Singson, feeling hemmed in, hit back: with the most damning exposé ever made of a sitting President.

Death by exposé: There lies the danger of treating the presidency as a protection racket. Singson dealt Estrada a near-fatal blow and exposed the President's links to the illicit world of gambling and crime. The network of complicity unraveled.

IF ERAP falls because of jueteng, it would be truly poetic. For one, the President is a consummate gambler, as attested by Singson's accounts of all-night mah-jongg parties where bets could total a staggering P50 million. Moreover, jueteng belongs to the world that created and molded Estrada—a world of sleaze, dirty politics and thuggery. It is also a milieu that, like Estrada, is quintessentially Filipino.

The world of jueteng is, as Singson described it, "Everybody happy: BIR, DILG, police hanggang sarhento (up to sergeant), sundalo (soldiers), mayor, governor, pati media." There were enough pay-offs to keep mouths shut and pockets full. Data from jueteng ledgers seized by the police in Ilocos Sur in June showed what the going rates in the province were: P1 million monthly for the regional PNP director; P500,000 for the provincial police chief; P150,000 for the local congressman; and PP7,500 to P30,000 for the municipal police chief, depending on the size of the town

In fact, the media played no mean part of this conspiracy of silence. Eighteen journalists were supposedly listed in the ledgers found by the police in their raids on Ilocos Sur gambling operations. The media also figured in the disbursements from jueteng money that were made to Jimmy Policarpio, head of Presidential Legislative Liaison Office. According to Singson, Policarpio keeps a stable of media people on his payroll to ensure that the President gets favorable coverage.

In 1995, a joint report by the PCIJ and the Institute for Popular Democracy showed the range of officials who provided protection for jueteng operations in a town in Pangasinan and estimated that about a third of the money raised from gambling went to pay for such protection. Operational costs accounted for another third: Of this, winnings took 10 percent; operational costs, 10 percent; cabos and cobradores, 10 percent. The remaining third went to the jueteng operator, who used up part of this money for the patronage that keeps the game's grassroots base grateful and happy.

Like local politics, jueteng is nurtured by a combination of complicity, beneficence and terror. It is in this same cauldron where corruption thrives and where Erap Estrada thought he could reign as President. He was very nearly proven right.

The problem is that even with Estrada gone, the world that gave rise to a gangster presidency continues to exist. The rot has set in and it will take more than the ouster of a President to rid us of it.


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