Will PNP chief stop jueteng?

EDITORIAL

Despite the assumption of Nicanor Bartolome as new chief of the Philippine National Police, jueteng is still up and about in northern Luzon and other parts of the country.

In the Cordillera where this paper is based,jueteng operations are still rampant in Baguio City, the towns of La Trinidad, Buguias, Mankayan, Itogon and Tublay in Benguet; Tabuk City and adjoining towns in Kalinga includingAbra particularly the capital town of Bangued among others.

The provinces of Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, La Union and Pangasinan in region 1 have also been havens of jueteng lords where police, military or local government officials have been reported to be in complicity if not the operators themselves.

It is the same in Region 2, more popularly known as Cagayan Valley. In Region 3 (Central Luzon), a government watchdog group Wednesday dared Bartolome to come out with a concrete result on the campaign against jueteng in Pampanga his first 60 days.

"Probably in his first 60 days in office, he (Bartolome) can come out with a concrete result on the police's crackdown on illegal numbers game," Harvey Keh, convener of the Kaya Natin Movement, said in a media forum in San Juan City last week.

Keh said President Benigno Aquino III promised to stop jueteng operations, but until now it has flourished in other provinces, particularly in Pampanga. "Not only in Pampanga, but it has now proliferated in other areas of the country," he said.

He said that if Bartolome fails to stop jueteng now, unscrupulous politicians would have ample time to stockpile money from the illegal numbers racket.

A number of cause oriented groups and even party list congressman have urged Bartolome to stop the illegal numbers game but it seems, jueteng lords are still going about their merry ways raking in millions of money at the expense of the bettors, who in most cases, don’t know that winning numbers are rigged.

If Bartolome is sincere in stopping the illegal numbers game, he could strictly implement the PNP’s “one-strike policy” wherein any police chief where jueteng is found would be sacked.

If Bartomome doesn’t act on this menace, he would be another of those PNP police chiefs who have retired from the service after being tainted of being involved in the illegal numbers game like getting millions of “protection money” from jueteng lords.

Of course if jueteng would not be stopped, it would also taint the sincerity of President Aquino in his tuwid na daan vow to cleanse government of corruption. And of course, people would be saying: Siempre malaking pera yan eh (Of course there is big money involved.)