In a television interview by ABS-CBN, House Speaker Martin Romualdez told Alvin Alchico that the Philippine Overseas Gaming Operations (POGOs) should not be banned.
The Speaker is against the complete banning of POGOs, just like POGO regulator Alejandro Tengco, chairman and CEO of Pagcor. Both officials contend that if the government implements a complete phaseout of POGO in the Philippines, these business establishments will just continue operating illegally and underground.
What we need, according to Martin, is for the government to enforce all relevant laws in the operation of legal and duly licensed POGOs. In other words, the Speaker wanted the status quo, whereby the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) issues licenses to POGO applicants following their cursory vetting, then they barely monitor their operations even if they have an office right inside the POGO compound, as was the case in the raided establishment in Bamban, Tarlac.
Martin Romualdez must either be clueless or insensitive to the series of crimes, shenanigans, and immorality going on inside these licensed POGO businesses, which Tengco tried to gloss over with a change of terminology from POGO to IGL (international gaming licensee).
No amount of sugar coating can hide the brutality, torture, kidnapping, scams and murder being committed inside these VIP compounds that even the mayor of Porac, Pampanga said he was not allowed to enter. These crimes have been probed, documented and validated by the Philippine National Police, with PNP chief General Rommel Marbil himself announcing this to the media.
What Speaker Martin is saying is that Philippine society will just have to tolerate this evil gambling system that even the government of China has condemned and banned—all in exchange for just some P20 billion that the legal POGOs are remitting to Pagcor.
This makes Martin the No. 1 patron of the POGOs, perhaps not Porac-based Senator Lito Lapid, whom my friend Toto Causing has accused of involvement in the illegal POGO operations in Porac, along with Pampanga Vice Governor Lilia “Nanay Baby” Pineda and her husband Bong Pineda.
Causing has claimed that no gambling activity will flourish in Pampanga without the approval of the Pinedas, as Bong’s name and influence has for decades now been linked to the illegal operation of “jueteng” even before there was e-Sabong in the Philippines. The one who claims should prove the same; and I am not convinced.
Toto Causing is a respected journalist of People’s Journal before, and an honest, competent lawyer before the Supreme Court “defrocked” him, stripping him of his license to practice, and also a mechanical engineer with a Ph. D. Toto is also a good friend of mine; a lawyer of the National Press Club and the Percy Lapid family.
Toto Causing may be wrong in his conclusions about gambling activities in Pampanga. But his revelations about the beautiful Alice L. Guo followed the line of questioning of Senator and Majority Flood Leader Jinggoy Estrada when he interrogated Alice at the Senate hearing.
This is about Alice Guo’s personal life, such as Jinggoy’s mention of a mayor in a town in the North who has been romantically linked with Alice and who was allegedly the manager-operator of the POGO in Bamban. This, of course, was denied by the attractive mayor.
This leads us back to the issue of POGO, the crimes associated with this gambling concern, and Speaker Martin’s take on this problem.
Martin should be ashamed of his colleague, Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, who has a clearer mind about this. Barbers said: “The social cost of this industry was proven to be so high that…it is not commensurate with the revenues that we are getting, so we should have a strong position about this.”
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