Mayor Protecting Illegal Bet Game's Bookies?

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

While sipping my hot brewed coffee in one of the coffee houses in Dagupan City while reading a hardbound book on rock and roll, a newshen came to my table and narrated the looming trouble between a Pangasinan mayor and a councilor.

“The councilor and colleagues at the Sangguniang Bayan passed a resolution denouncing the proliferation of bookies (of the illegal number game played like jueteng) at the expense of Speed Game, Inc. When the resolution was sent to the mayor for his ministerial signing he would not do it,” the lady reporter said.

Speed Game Inc. is the franchisee or the authorized agency corporation (AAC) of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office mandated to remit P3.9 million a day or P117 million monthly  to the government’s coffer.

I posed to her the following: Why the mayor would not sign it? Does it mean he was/is a recipient of the payolas from the book makers?

She sheepishly grinned to me as if she reads what was in my mind.

Bookie, according to a gambling personality, is where a person copies the result of a legal number game like Speed Game Inc. while he operates illegally.

The newshen told me that the mayor had a debt of gratitude to the councilor because the latter was responsible for the former being catapulted to his present post.

In case the mayor conspired with the operators of the illegal business, he plays brinkmanship between being a public servant and a principal of the proliferation of the illegal number games that would surely get the ire  of President Rodrigo Duterte.

 The real reason why the illegally-declared-by-the-court Meridian Vista Gaming Corporation allegedly ran by Gambling God Father Atong Ang stopped when Duterte became president because Ang knew that the president meant business to corner the almost P30 billion pesos revenues a year of Meridian, jueteng, and illegal number game operators all over the country so he can funnel them to social funds of the poor.

Years ago, Atong Ang was running dead scare by jumping into a private jet from Cagayan de Oro to Manila because some generals wanted him killed when he was in a high stake cockpit streaking game in that Mindanao City, media outlets reported.

In case the shenanigan of the mayor reached Malacanang or the Ombudsman, the mayor would not like it.
If the Office of the President fails to chop his head, he would be likened to his fellow chief executive’s Pozurobio, Pangasinan Mayor Artemio Chan who was sacked by the Ombudsman because of the administrative cases of grave misconduct and serious dishonesty after he was found out ordering an ordinary government employee to officiate a wedding in June 2016 and signing the marriage certificate that he (mayor) solemnized it.

Aside from dismissal from service, Chan would be meted, if found with substantial evidences, the penalty of perpetual disqualification from holding public office, cancellation of civil service eligibility, forfeiture of retirement benefits and bar from taking civil service examination

And I’m not talking here about the cases of the more serious criminal charges of Republic Act No. 9287 (An Act Increasing the Penalties for Illegal Number Games, Others) and the Anti-Graft & Corrupt Practices Act that will see him being thrown in the slammer because he (mayor) coddled operators of the illegal number game.

For the unwary public officials including the chiefs of police protecting the nefarious acts not only in my province but in the entire country, here’s RA 9287: ” The penalty of imprisonment from sixteen (16) years and one (1) day to twenty (20) years, if such person acts as protector or coddler (Paragraph g Section 3)”.

READ:

General to P'gasinan Cops: Assist Speed Game vs Jueteng

(You can read my selected columns at mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortz@yahoo.com)