Immorality by Conrad de Quiros
Theres The Rub
Immorality
By Conrado de QuirosPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 04:05:00 09/28/2010Filed Under:
MIRIAM SANTIAGO got her facts wrong, says Archbishop Oscar Cruz. Atong Ang is not into jueteng, he is into jai-alai. He is not a jueteng lord, he is a jueteng scourge since jueteng competes with his favorite vice.
Earlier, Cruz’s group, Krusadang Bayan Laban sa Jueteng, criticized the Small Town Lottery for promoting jueteng instead of killing it. The STL is the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office’s answer to jueteng, a perfectly legal and government-controlled operation. All it has really done, Krusadang Bayan says, is to strengthen jueteng because of a faulty system that allows franchise holders to remit only 10 percent of total earnings to the government. In effect, the STL merely fronts for jueteng.
The archbishop is a sterling person and his crusade to rid this world of corruption from jueteng is praiseworthy. But my question is: What on earth is the difference between jai-alai, STL and jueteng?
Every time I ask that question, I get the answer: Well, jai-alai and STL are legal and jueteng is not. Which in fact only raises the question: Why on earth are jai-alai and STL legal while jueteng is not?
That’s what bowls me over about all this. Not least the use of other forms of gambling, such as STL, to stamp out jueteng. What makes jueteng so especially evil it has to be stamped out and the others not so? What makes jueteng so immoral, so disruptive, so much a scourge of humanity it has to be wiped off the face of the earth and the others not so? Why is the group called Krusadang Bayan Laban sa Jueteng and not Krusadang Bayan Laban sa Sugal?
In fact, why do people assume this state of affairs as though it were the most natural thing in the world? What is the difference between STL and jueteng? What is the difference between off-track betting, which is the favorite haunt of tricycle drivers near where I live, with them adding drinking to gambling while at it, and jueteng? What is the difference between the bingo parties, which the parishes themselves sponsor to raise funds, the mahjongg that takes place in porches and yards in plain view of passersby, or the pusoy that goes on in wakes, with real dead or rented corpses, and jueteng?
All of them are forms of gambling. All of them involve laying out sums of money in the hope that the combination of numbers printed on one’s ticket is pulled out by whatever it is that pulls these things out—a horse race, an exciting game from Spain, a not very exciting spinning of numbered balls. All of them involve wasting time and resources, fueling spousal disputes, reducing the indio to ignorance and sloth, vices Jose Rizal railed about in his time.
In fact the only quality that distinguishes jueteng from the others is the very extrinsic one of its being more popular than the others, being more widespread than the others, being more prevalent than the others. And the reason that is so is that it pays better, or offers better odds. And the reason that is so is that it is run by gambling lords who are able to offer those terms because it is extremely profitable. And the reason that is so is that, like alcohol during
Prohibition in the United States, it is illegal.
You make it legal, you make jueteng just like the others. You make it legal, you stamp it out in a manner of speaking.
The fact that no one, priest or layman, is complaining about the other forms of gambling, indeed the fact that everyone, Church-based or State-based, seems perfectly willing to accept the other forms of gambling, must suggest that there is really no moral argument against jueteng. If gambling is morally wrong, then why militate against one form of gambling and not against all forms of gambling?
Frankly, it astonishes me why we have to go through the tortuous and torturous route of spreading STL to stamp out jueteng, which is really just substituting one form of gambling for another. If the argument is that STL is legal and jueteng is not, then why on earth not make jueteng legal as well? You make it legal, you stop the bribes. You make it legal, you abolish the gambling lords. You make it legal, you regulate it. Same as STL.
Like I said last time, gambling is like cigarettes and alcohol. Like them, you may, and ought, to discourage it. But like them, you may not, and ought not, to outlaw it. Outlawing it will do more harm than good—as we are seeing right now with jueteng.
In any case, banning it, or some forms of it, is futile. The only form of gambling you should really ban is Russian roulette, and you won’t be able to punish the guilty anyway—they’ll be busy being dead. The only thing that will really stop gambling, or curb it, is not law, it is education. The poor are naturally prone to gambling because they are uneducated. You are uneducated, you will not want to read a book, you will want to play pusoy. You are uneducated, you will not want to go to the columns section of the Inquirer, you will want to go to the “hot tips” section of a tabloid, or consult Madame Auring on the numerical interpretations of dreams. You are uneducated, you will not want to contemplate “Waiting for Godot,” you will want to indulge jueteng for luck.
Indeed the poor are naturally prone to gambling because their very poverty makes of their lives a daily gamble. The predisposition is there. The instinct is there. Gambling is what a family does when it refuses to leave the foothills of Mt. Mayon when it is about to blow up, when it pitches shanties that jut out on creeks that swell each time it rains, when it allocates the children to different destinations: the brightest to school, the prettiest to a beerhouse, the toughest to a gang and a life of crime. They are gambling, with far higher stakes than they’ll ever bet in jueteng.
That’s the real immorality of it.
Immorality
By Conrado de QuirosPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 04:05:00 09/28/2010Filed Under:
MIRIAM SANTIAGO got her facts wrong, says Archbishop Oscar Cruz. Atong Ang is not into jueteng, he is into jai-alai. He is not a jueteng lord, he is a jueteng scourge since jueteng competes with his favorite vice.
Earlier, Cruz’s group, Krusadang Bayan Laban sa Jueteng, criticized the Small Town Lottery for promoting jueteng instead of killing it. The STL is the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office’s answer to jueteng, a perfectly legal and government-controlled operation. All it has really done, Krusadang Bayan says, is to strengthen jueteng because of a faulty system that allows franchise holders to remit only 10 percent of total earnings to the government. In effect, the STL merely fronts for jueteng.
The archbishop is a sterling person and his crusade to rid this world of corruption from jueteng is praiseworthy. But my question is: What on earth is the difference between jai-alai, STL and jueteng?
Every time I ask that question, I get the answer: Well, jai-alai and STL are legal and jueteng is not. Which in fact only raises the question: Why on earth are jai-alai and STL legal while jueteng is not?
That’s what bowls me over about all this. Not least the use of other forms of gambling, such as STL, to stamp out jueteng. What makes jueteng so especially evil it has to be stamped out and the others not so? What makes jueteng so immoral, so disruptive, so much a scourge of humanity it has to be wiped off the face of the earth and the others not so? Why is the group called Krusadang Bayan Laban sa Jueteng and not Krusadang Bayan Laban sa Sugal?
In fact, why do people assume this state of affairs as though it were the most natural thing in the world? What is the difference between STL and jueteng? What is the difference between off-track betting, which is the favorite haunt of tricycle drivers near where I live, with them adding drinking to gambling while at it, and jueteng? What is the difference between the bingo parties, which the parishes themselves sponsor to raise funds, the mahjongg that takes place in porches and yards in plain view of passersby, or the pusoy that goes on in wakes, with real dead or rented corpses, and jueteng?
All of them are forms of gambling. All of them involve laying out sums of money in the hope that the combination of numbers printed on one’s ticket is pulled out by whatever it is that pulls these things out—a horse race, an exciting game from Spain, a not very exciting spinning of numbered balls. All of them involve wasting time and resources, fueling spousal disputes, reducing the indio to ignorance and sloth, vices Jose Rizal railed about in his time.
In fact the only quality that distinguishes jueteng from the others is the very extrinsic one of its being more popular than the others, being more widespread than the others, being more prevalent than the others. And the reason that is so is that it pays better, or offers better odds. And the reason that is so is that it is run by gambling lords who are able to offer those terms because it is extremely profitable. And the reason that is so is that, like alcohol during
Prohibition in the United States, it is illegal.
You make it legal, you make jueteng just like the others. You make it legal, you stamp it out in a manner of speaking.
The fact that no one, priest or layman, is complaining about the other forms of gambling, indeed the fact that everyone, Church-based or State-based, seems perfectly willing to accept the other forms of gambling, must suggest that there is really no moral argument against jueteng. If gambling is morally wrong, then why militate against one form of gambling and not against all forms of gambling?
Frankly, it astonishes me why we have to go through the tortuous and torturous route of spreading STL to stamp out jueteng, which is really just substituting one form of gambling for another. If the argument is that STL is legal and jueteng is not, then why on earth not make jueteng legal as well? You make it legal, you stop the bribes. You make it legal, you abolish the gambling lords. You make it legal, you regulate it. Same as STL.
Like I said last time, gambling is like cigarettes and alcohol. Like them, you may, and ought, to discourage it. But like them, you may not, and ought not, to outlaw it. Outlawing it will do more harm than good—as we are seeing right now with jueteng.
In any case, banning it, or some forms of it, is futile. The only form of gambling you should really ban is Russian roulette, and you won’t be able to punish the guilty anyway—they’ll be busy being dead. The only thing that will really stop gambling, or curb it, is not law, it is education. The poor are naturally prone to gambling because they are uneducated. You are uneducated, you will not want to read a book, you will want to play pusoy. You are uneducated, you will not want to go to the columns section of the Inquirer, you will want to go to the “hot tips” section of a tabloid, or consult Madame Auring on the numerical interpretations of dreams. You are uneducated, you will not want to contemplate “Waiting for Godot,” you will want to indulge jueteng for luck.
Indeed the poor are naturally prone to gambling because their very poverty makes of their lives a daily gamble. The predisposition is there. The instinct is there. Gambling is what a family does when it refuses to leave the foothills of Mt. Mayon when it is about to blow up, when it pitches shanties that jut out on creeks that swell each time it rains, when it allocates the children to different destinations: the brightest to school, the prettiest to a beerhouse, the toughest to a gang and a life of crime. They are gambling, with far higher stakes than they’ll ever bet in jueteng.
That’s the real immorality of it.
posted by kitsch at 6:39 PM
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