Food for the brain

 Dear insansapinas,
Sa akin ang alam ko pag nanaginip ka ng ahas, ocho daw yon sa jueteng. Sa lotto yata iba. mwehehe

 photocredit
Kung ang article na ito ni stuart santiago ay pagkain, sasabihin kong ito ang isa sa pinakamagaling na food for the brain. 


Ang excerpt sa ibaba ay isang kutsara pa lang ng buong dish. . Punta kayo  sa kaniyang artikulong pinamagatang jueteng's wild. Weep and weep. 
Gusto ninyo ng kumot? 

president joseph estrada wanted to legalize jueteng but was met with moral outrage and so he backed off, saying “gambling is not my priority.” [p 476]   hmm, sounds familiar, lol

Only weeks after his inauguration in July 1998, the president summoned a rogue’s gallery of gamblers to his private residence at Polk Street in the Manila suburb of San Juan: masiao operator Charlie “Atong” Ang, Central Luzon jueteng boss Rodolfo “Bong” Pineda, and northern Luzon jueteng promoter Luis “Chavit” Singson, who was also the governor of Ilocos Sur. At this secret summit the president decided that his gambling buddy Charlie Ang would “set up the network” of regional racketeers and jueteng boss Bong Pineda would deliver the president’s 3 percent cut to Chavit so it would not be “obvious.” When Charlie Ang lost Estrada’s confidence by skimming executive kickbacks from a tobacco tax scam several months later, Estrada replaced him with Chavit Singson, who worked effectively with Luzon’s “gambling lords” for the next two years, assigning each a fixed territory to avoid conflict and collecting the president’s cut. Every month from November 1998 to August 2000, these underworld operators paid Chavit the president’s share, which totaled some Php35 million. And every two weeks Chavit made regular cash deliveries to the president. During these fifteen months Chavit collected a total of Php545.2 million –Php414.3 million paid directly to Estrada, Php123 million invested for him in the Fontana Casino at Clark Field, and the balance doled out to presidential kin. . . . [pp 477-478]
Playing on rising opposition to jueteng, Estrada’s closest allies renewed their pressure for legal alternatives. Appealing to the president’s avarice, rival supplicants promised him an even greater income, each tugging at personal ties to promote his own scheme as the most lucrative lottery. Charlie Ang promoted a jueteng look-alike branded “Bingo 2-Ball,” legalized by a Pagcor license, that promised Estrada Php70 million a day. [p479] . . . In June 2000 Pagcor skirted its own regulations to issue a license for Charlie Ang’s Bingo 2-Ball because, as its chair Alice Reyes explained, “it had the endorsement of the Office of the President.” . . . . Settng aside its usual propriety, Pagcor hired palace crony and crime boss Charlie Ang as its official Bingo 2-Ball “consultant.” Not only did the government gaming board pay him an exorbitant fee of five hundred thousand pesos (eleven thousand dollars) per day, but it gave him unchecked authority over the new lottery, making it, in effect, a legal front for reorganization of the old jueteng racket. Armed with this broad authority, Ang dictated the terms for the new Bingo 2-Ball franchises: 2 percent for the PNP, 13 percent for cobradores, 23 percent for Pagcor, and a hefty 62 percent for his own contractors. Significantly, it was Ang, not Pagcor, who awarded the local franchises, and he did it in ways designed to destroy his rivals among Luzon’s reigning jueteng lords, Chavit Singson and Bong Pineda. . . . Adding insult to injury, Charlie Ang awarded the bingo contract for the Ilocos region to Eric Singson, Governor Chavit Singson’s distant cousin, “mortal enemy,” and rival gubernatorial candidate. “I made it know to the President,” Chavit recalled, “that I felt bad when Atong Ang gave franchises for the Bingo 2-Ball to my political rivals. I told them to stop the Bingo 2-Ball operation or I would expose them.” [pp 480-481]

and expose them he did.   the rest is edsa dos history.   as for president gloria macapagal arroyo, no less than her husband miguel was accused of receiving protection money from jueteng lords.

Allegations that the the “first gentleman” had collected bribes from illegal jueteng syndicates to fund his wife’s presidential campaign had plunged the country yet again into a protracted crisis of rumored coups, mass demonstrations, and attempted impeachment. At first he denied the charges. But an opposition senator exposed secret bank accounts under the pseudonym “Pidal,” coincidentally and convincingly the middle name of Mike Arroyo’s grandfather. Only two days after the historic apology {for “Hello, Garci”}, the president felt compelled to announce that her husband would be going abroad for an indefinite period of political exile. [p498]

and now we have another aquino as president.   on july 11 the big news was of noynoy ordering robredo to stop jueteng.

Robredo said on Sunday that the campaign to stamp out jueteng would be done nationwide. He was quoted as saying on Saturday that President Benigno Aquino III “issued a very clear directive to stop jueteng.”

but the next day, july 12, stopping jueteng was a low priority bigla.

Mr. Aquino Monday said the issue of what to do with the multibillion-peso underground industry—a source of corruption over the years—was not atop his list of priorities.
“That’s a low priority for me,” he told reporters after a military command conference in Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City.
Robredo himself Monday said that the main focus of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) would be the empowerment of local governments.
Aquino noted that the Philippine National Police, the primary agency tasked with stamping out illegal gambling, had more important things to do such as helping in the campaign to end extrajudicial killings.

lol.   what happened kaya on sunday?   what, who, changed his tune re jueteng?   your guess — your bet — is as good as mine.

 Pinaysaamerika