DAGUPAN CITY—’Don’t blame us’.
Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz, the country’s top anti-jueteng crusader, gave this message to people displaced by jueteng stoppage.
Cruz said in a statement in his website that,” It is definitely not the anti-jueteng people who neither used nor made any money through them. And it is incongruous for them to blame precisely those who want to stop their abuse and exploitation by their jueteng lord and operators”.
Last week, some 200 jueteng workers in Nueva Vizcaya trooped to the residence of Bayombong Bishop Ramon Villena demanding alternative livelihood. They told Villena to stop opposing the illegal numbers game in their province even as they demanded his transfer whom they blamed for the successful raid on jueteng dens in neighboring Solano town.
The prelate said it is the jueteng lords and operators who used and abused them. He said the former became rich and infamous while the latter remain impoverished and discarded. But he said all of them know that jueteng is illegal. “It is incongruous for the same to make demands after deliberate and long violations of the law,” he added.
Cruz said  it is the jueteng lords and operators who have become filthy rich precisely by making use of their services for many years, everyday, rain or shine.
“They were poor when they began their jueteng venture; they remained poor all throughout their jueteng years. And poor they still are when they were abandoned by their jueteng lords and operators,” he said.
He said it is wherefore the jueteng lords and operators from whom they should demand consideration and recompense. It is from them they have the right to ask for grants to loans, for livelihood or any decent work.
“It is their jueteng masters that practically made them slaves to make millions, he added. It is but logical that they pursue them for their needs when jueteng is stopped for one reason or another.”           
Cruz said jueteng continues to exploit precisely the already poor and little people in the country. Jueteng financiers continue to lord it over all public authorities from the local to the national levels, he added.
“Presidential Decree No. 9287 effective since 19 April 2004 continues to be a big joke,” he said.
He said the bigger joke is when jueteng is stopped and the jueteng hierarchy stages a revolt.

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