With two weeks left in office, President Duterte rues that he had not stopped esabong completely and did not heed the Senate Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs to halt it. A DILG survey showed 62 percent of Filipinos want the online betting on GCash and Paymaya stopped.
Outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte regrets allowing online cockfighting or esabong to proliferate despite its mounting social ills – affecting not just workers but even the jobless, worse students and kids as young as 5 years old and farmers who barely earn enough to feed their families.
This deadly vice perpetrated by gambling lord Atong Ang (major financier of previous presidents) is worth P60 billion a month and uses a gambling app.
Duterte earlier called for its suspension but on the prodding of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. allowed it to resume and then stopped it again. But there are reports that esabong operates flagrantly even with a stop order.
Salot sa lipunan has been how many parents, priests and several sectors of society have branded the esabong, which further impoverished people in the countryside.
“I’m sorry, I did not really realize that it would be like… Akala ko kasi ‘yung ano…Naimbiyerna kasi ako sa P640 million a month tapos so many billions a year because…maraming nago-operate eh,” said Duterte with barely two weeks left in office.
“But I realized very late and I am very sorry that it had to happen. Hindi ko akalain na ganoon, hindi naman ako nagsusugal. I do not gamble, I do not drink anymore, only water,” Duterte added.
Duterte ordered the termination of all e-sabong operations in the country on May 4 after a survey by the Department of Interior and Local Government showed that 62 percent of Filipinos wanted the online betting on GCash and Paymaya stopped.
The respondents cited addiction to gambling (including minors), bankruptcy of players, indebtedness, cost to family, neglect of work and studies, and crime.
Since Pitmasters Live of gaming kingpin Atong Ang obtained the first e-sabong license on April 8, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) has granted a total of nine licenses.
Duterte had ignored the Senate Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs’ recommendation to stop e-sabong in a hearing last February.
In that same hearing, Ang boasted about getting the lion’s share of the estimated P60 billion bets made every month on e-sabong of which his Pitmaster earned P3 billion per month while remitting only P640 million a month to Pagcor.
Ang is at the center of a Senate probe which investigated the disappearance of at least 34 sabungeros from the cockpit owned by the self-styled “legal gambling lord.”
Tags: #Duterte, #esabong, #AtongAng, #deadlyvice, #onlinegambling