Viewpoints
CUTE!
By +Oscar V. Cruz, JCD
SUCH is the less painful way to describe a sad phenomenon, a soothing mode to speak of a shameful reality – “Cute!” The word not only lessens the mortification but also somehow neutralizes the disgrace present, the scandal generated – “Cute!” There is this concrete and well-known actuality that brings about a pervasive and disconcerting vice in the country with the blessing of Malacañang – “Cute!” This is none other than the de jure plus the de facto legalized gambling from the local to the national levels. Now, it can be said with clarity and certainty that there is an honest-to-goodness official gambling industry in the country – courtesy of the Palace repeatedly boasting of its sublime honor and supreme integrity.
The trio of “Guns, goons, and gold” is not only a given reality in elections and in politics but also a standing fact in big, formalized, and organized gambling corporations and syndicates in the country. Let it be said with truth and candor that gambling does not foment virtue but vice, in no way inspires generosity but greed. The desire and design of taking the money – bets – of others, the opportune and dependable means for money laundering, the ominous presence of “financiers” – official money lenders usually at 25% interest per day – plus the usual unsaid and untold availability of high class “Service Women” here and there, all these and other amoral realities accompany the casino GOCC ventures.
There is the on-going building of a gambling paradise funded by dubious capitalists and envisioned to be frequented by both foreign and local “professional” gamblers – under the auspices of PAGCOR. There is even the classy highway envisioned to make it easy for both foreign and local gamblers to reach and leave the “Entertainment City.” This is a serious and big attempt to take away the “Gambling Laurels” – plus all the other vices that go therewith – from Macau.
And there is PCSO with all conceivable gambling forms that are still in the drawing board or have already been launched long since in the different regions of the Philippines. The tired and tiring PCSO claim of taking over the already long since in fact “legalized” Jueteng in particular – this is but a dream, considering that there are marked indications to the effect that Jueteng has three major pillars of protection and support, viz., the many local government officials, certain PNP members in the place plus some Baranggay figures. This is to say nothing that the Malacanang occupant himself expressly and clearly said that stopping jueteng was not his priority. Why, oh, why?
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