If jueteng is a metaphor for corruption, then we are swimming in it and we could be the winged creature in the Chinese adage:" A swan that swims in a swamp also thinks it stinks."
The illegal numbers game is a multi-billion-peso industry involving a great number of public men, from secretaries to police chiefs and their subordinates to provincial governors, to town mayors and barangay(village) chiefs. Include the bettors, the mostly poor people who gamble and take a chance to hit the once in their lifetime jackpot. But the beneficiaries are mostly the powers-that-be, receiving as much as P100,000, according to sources. There was a time in late 1980s that a regional police director in the Ilocos was receiving P1-million monthly from jueteng lords.
No comments:
Post a Comment