The dark world of jueteng

Back Channel

By Alejandro Del Rosario  

Manila Standard Today

A window into the dark world of jueteng was opened on Net 25’s TV program, On Line Balita, which gave an insight into the internecine rivalry of crime bosses and the huge money involved that led to the Atimonan carnage on January 6.

Two civilian witnesses have surfaced to give a vivid account of the carnage in Atimonan to Justice Secretary Leila de Lima during a reenactment at the crime scene. On board a truck, they were told by the combined police-military group manning a checkpoint to move on. They claimed they saw two men from one of the vehicles alight with their hands raised but were still shot. This was followed with a fusillade from the group beside the road on the two Montero sports utility vehicles killing the 11 other occupants.

Police Superintendent James Melad, relieved as Director of Calabarzon (Region IV) after the Atimonan incident, insists Coplan Armado was approved by Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa, head of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission. Melad who talked to reporters when he appeared before the NBI panel probing the case, said “only the funding for the operation was disapproved but the plan was given the green light.”

Whistleblower Sandra Cam, the resource person on Arlene de la Cruz’s TV program last Wednesday, is someone with inside information on the illegal numbers game who is not easily dismissed. She laments that President Aquino, the only one who can really stop jueteng, has not given the order to do so.

Walked through by the sharp and leading questions of the veteran print and broadcast journalist Arlene de la Cruz, Cam validated initial findings that the bloody Jan.6 incident was a turf war between a jueteng king, Vic Siman, in the Bicol, Batangas and Laguna provinces and a jueteng queen related to one of the police officials involved in the Atimonan carnage. Siman was among the 13 men slain in Atimonan.

Another Siman henchman, Fernando Morales, was dragged out of his house in San Juan, Batangas a few days after Atimonan and was killed in an alleged shootout by men posing as policemen.

Although Cam cleared President Aquino as benefiting from jueteng, she said the money trail from town mayors, governors, PNP and military provincial commanders go all the way to Malacanang. She refused, however, to name the Palace official linked to the payola. Given Cam’s vulnerability, one can understand why she is constrained from naming names. What is hard to understand is why the national leadership can’t seem to see that jueteng is no longer just an underworld industry. Like drug trafficking, jueteng has gone past the nascent stage of being a national security threat.

With their enormous funds, the crime lords can undermine the state by buying off law enforcers and financing the election of officials from the local to national level.

The shocker was when Sandra said three senators also get a share of jueteng money. But again she demurred from naming them. Ms. Cam said it is logical some politicians were receiving campaign funds from jueteng. She is no longer under the government’s witness protection after her expose of the extent of the illegal numbers game. With threats from jueteng lords, Sandra said she has committed her life in the “hands of a higher Lord.”

She revealed that DILG Secretary Mar Roxas, who warned jueteng operators in Pampanga to cease and desist, should look into his region where the illegal numbers game has spread to Iloilo and Negros.

Cam claims she is in possession of bank deposits slips purportedly given to a ranking official.

Joining Sandra in the war against jueteng are former priest and Pampanga Governor “Among Ed” Panlilio and retired Pangasinan Archbishop Oscar Cruz.

The continued proliferation of jueteng, Cam said, was operating under the guise of the Small Town Lottery. The modus operandi of the jueteng lords, she said , was to pay off an STL operator who has been licensed by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office. The licensed STL operator bribed or under duress from crime lords, then allows two extra draws that are actually jueteng under STL cover.

The PCSO has been promising to unveil a new Small Town Lottery designed to eradicate jueteng. The new PCSO board headed by Margie Juico, however, still has to come up with the master plan after two years on the job. It makes you wonder whether they really have a plan or the plan was shelved. Hmm.

Change of venue

The 9:30 breakfast meeting on Jan. 22 of John Negroponte, former US ambassador to Manila, with invited journalists has been moved from the Manila Peninsula to the Mandarin Hotel’s Nash Room.

Negroponte, former chief of US Intelligence and America’s ambassador to the United Nations, will also address on the same day a joint American and European Chambers of Commerce and the Asia Society co-hosted by the Carlos P. Romulo Foundation at 12 noon at the Taipan Room of the PhilAm Tower Club.