Jueteng Republic

The Philippines Jueteng Needs A Minor Paradigm Shift

Jueteng. With the silent J. Pronounced hu wet eng.

What is jueteng and what is this hullabaloo called jueteng that is engulfing us when we have much more pressing problems to address? Theway things are going…the Juetengs are going…we are missing the forest for the trees.

To answer that very important question we have to first ask Why is jueteng illiegal?To answer this we have to rewind to the years 1500-1600 when the Spanish invaded and conquered and occupied theseislands and called them the Philippines. And while we are in that yearwe have to wear the glasses of the then Jueteng lord who was therelong before the Spanish came and converted almost the entire 7000 islands from a Moslem mindset to a right wing Christian conservativeone.

Try to empathize with the Jueteng lord if you will just for a minute. Here you are, an extremely wealthy lord , minding your own business and along come these barbarians who not only made you switch your religion whatever you were, Moslem Buddhist Anting-Anting by force,they demanded a cut in your business, and it was not like the young starryeyed missionaries we still see on the streets of the Philippines today,carrying their laptops and their bibles befriending the natives with their dollars. Oh no in those days the Philippines was almost entirely peacefully Moslesm no different from peaceful Moslems you see today. And there was no way you are going to convert a Moslem any other way but with the use of force. For no matter how peaceful you are, it is extremely difficult to change someone praying 5 times a day to Allah to overnight pray once a week to Jesus. The resistance these brave Moslem islanders put up will never be known.

I doubt we will ever get the exact story on how the Spanish must have butchered the hundred of thousands of islanders who refused to convert to another religion who were labeled as terrorists and were killed on sight. There was no CNN and Al Jazeera then, no Amnesty International,no UN,no PCIJ, but you can be sure a bloody war was raged till the Moslem/Buddhist insurgents were crushed. From Batanes to the northern tip of Mindanao. They must have killed most of the male population over the age of 10 who refused to convert before their widowed wives begged them to please spare her children and they will gladly convert.

By the next generation, almost the entire northern and central Philippines was ethnically cleansed. Unfortunately the war against the Moslems in the Philippines is still raging and we seem to still be carrying the torch for Magellan and the Spanish conquistadores.

In those days it was all out war against the Moslems in the name of Christianity. The Spanish with their might is right were able to conquer by force a bloody occupation of the Philippines. Its either you’re with the Spanish or you’re a terrorist. Its either you believe in our dogmas and convert or well cut your head off. We will never know the true story as history was written by the Spanish and before long , in less than a hundred years that peace loving Moslem islander that the Spanish turned into an insurgent Moslem terrorist was turned into a docile catholic Filipino.(Named after the Spanish king Felipe) We should rename our republic to honor the real hero Lapu Lapu who stood up to the invading foreigners and not the king who butchered millions of innocent islanders in his quest for colonizing the islands.

In their quest for domination, and after the proverbial dust had settled in the Philippines, the Spanish conquistadores and missionary priests in all the provinces didn’t have to look far before they discovered this incredible game that all the Philippines was playing three times a day called Jueteng. They were amazed at how much money it generated. Church bingo was never like this!

And it didn’t take long before the Spanish governor and the Bishops and all the priests figured out how to get a lions share of the action. They decreed that God was against Jueteng because it corrupted the young and old alike and therefore it was illegal. A Jueteng cleansing campaign was waged and all the Jueteng lords down to the bagmen were arrested and jailed and released given warning that a harsher sentence awaits them if they broke the law.

Jueteng is no different than lotto but it is even better than lotto. There is no reason on earth Jueteng should stay illegal. There is also no reason on earth we should take away this incredibly fair game of chance that we have been playing for thousands of years long before the Spanish came and disrupted our love of the game of chance.

I strayed into that topic for a minute to bring out the next predicament the Jueteng lord had to face. Not only did the war on the islands wreck the day to day operations of his business, he was now subject to not only switching gods but his legitimate business lottery operation, his bread and butter that he had been handed down to him from his father and grandfather was being deemed illiegal by the new god he recently embraced!

I just want you to keep empathizing with the Jueteng Lord another minute or more dear Sheila if you will,hope I am not boring you with all this, put yourself in the mansion of the Jueteng lord for a few minutes. Here you are, you are the richest man in the land as you have been playing this game called Jueteng that everybody loves and playing it three times a day and have had no problems whatsoever with anyone in fact you were loved and considered a local hero by everyone as you donated heavily to helping improve your town, you have just redecorated your palace with the latest imported and local Spanish style furniture using a spanish interior decorator including a host of crucifixes and statues of the virgin Mary to please these bully Spanish governors and generals and cardinals and bishops and priests and frankly as not to get your head cut off like the Jueteng lords who refused to convert.

Here you are , a newly converted Christian and the Spanish have taught you and your kids the ten commandments which you embraced and switched from Moslem to Christian for fear of your life and fear of your children’s children’s lives, and after all that, the Spanish are now saying, we forgot to say that god has an 11th commandment especially tailored for the Philippines and no where else on earth.

11. Thou shalt not Juetength.

But the cardinal is whispering in your ear that god loves you dear Jueteng lord and wants to work with you so there is a special addendum to the 11th commandment made just for you Mr. Jueteng Lord.

11. (a) Thou shalt not Juetength without given the holy catholic church 60% of your winnings.

If you were the jueteng lord circa 1600 and you were faced with this impossible frustrating situation what would YOU do?

What would any smart Filipino Chinese entrepreneur do? First of all you would thank Buddah ,thank Allah or your lucky stars and be glad to be alive in one piece after enduring a hundred years war with the savage white barbarian. You would take a sharp cut in your winnings and render unto Caesar , Cesar’s salad, and still remain a very wealthy lord landlord and kingmaker. Wouldn’t you? Honestly if you were a jueteng lord in 1700 and the Spanish Governor was holding a gun to your head and in effect saying,

“you will 1) either give us most of your earnings or 2) we will kill you and all your family.” Wouldn’t you give the barbarian what he wanted? It was then agreed on a handshake (we are just assuming at this point) that Jueteng would go on and theSpanish soldiers would turn a blind eye. That one act of bribery was the great great grandmother of all our graft and corruption today.

Jueteng was driven underground but thrived nevertheless and everyone was happy. This “Jueteng is illegal” charade went on for the next couple of hundred years and was quickly incorporated into the laws and bylaws of the Philippine constitution when lawmakers saw their chance to get in on the action too by making sure Jueteng stayed illegal. Now the jueteng lord had no problem with that. The only problem at the time was the Church was no longer the sole absolute power, the church now had to share power and the jueteng cut from the jueteng lords with the state. There was in effect no true separation of church and state in the Philippines as they were also business partners controlling 60% of the jueteng business. And so the laws were passed keeping jueteng a crime.

11. (b) Thou shalt not juetength without giving the church and the politicians 60% of your winnings.

There is no reason on earth that the game of jueteng should be illegal. For those of you who are in the dark as to what the hell jueteng is and what the hell is that game all about but were afraid to ask department, (half the people asked were clueless as to what IS jueteng?) jueteng is basically the great grandfather of the lotto game we play in the Philippines and all over the world. Jueteng is exactly like lotto where you chose 6 numbers out of 46 but instead of having to chose 6 numbers and spend the rest of your life never even getting even 4 out of the 6, in jueteng you only have to guess 2 two numbers out of 46 and you’re the grand winner for that draw.

When you only have to pick only 2 numbers instead of 6 its needless to say that your odds of wining will greatly increase. In jueteng there are hundreds of winners in every draw and there are three draws a day morning noon and night and you so have a hundreds of happy winners everyday infecting thousands of other people with their luck and chance at the easy buck. The pot is much smaller but it is preferred by the masses that hundreds win small versus one who wins big.

President Joseph Estrada wanted to “legalize” the game by introducingas the PAGCOR’s “Two Ball” while at the same time closing down the jueteng lords operations. That was wrong. He probably would have finiushed his term had he not done that.The playing at the grassroots level should be legalized and promoted as a part of our culture that has survived almost 500 years and that has to no longer live in fear and pay tong to the church and the politicos. So to the 500 years of the church’s enriching themselves and the 100 years of politicians and police enriching themselves from jueteng is enough don’t you think? Its time to legalize and use the money to help the poor instead of helping the politicos and the policemen and the priests.

We would need a minor paradigm shift from the old 11th commandment that said Thou shalt not juetength without giving the church and the police_ticians, to:

11.(a) Thou shalt Juetength and give the urban poor X % (negotiable) of your winnings.

I am sure after jueteng is legalized and amnesty is given to everyone involved in this Chinese Filipino phenomenon called jueteng that should be exported to the world all the Jueteng lords would come out of the closet and work with the government in keeping it the “Filipino” tradition that it is and making sure that in this new paradigm, Caesar renders unto the people.

Amnesty should be given to ALL the jueteng lords and all the bagmen and all the kobradores as well as to all the politicians, the generals mayors and congressmen, the clergy. Yes even the clergy. Amnesty for Cardinal Sin (Do you remember the good cardinal admitting many years ago “The church will take money from the devil to help the church if it had to”? He was referring to jueteng money from the jueteng lord.

Amnesty for the Church who got us into this mess in the first place. But coming with this amnesty they must apologize for 500 years of persecuting the Jueteng lords and turning a harmless game of chance into a crime to enrich themselves.

Amnesty should be given to these jueteng lord heroes who have lived for the last 500 years as criminals in the eyes of the law that was hell bent in keeping a harmless game like jueteng illegal.

The jueteng lord should stay the lord. He was never a criminal in the first place. The jueteng lord needs to be recognized for having endured 500 years of a bloody bully Spanish regime (that came out of nowhere and disturbed the harmony of the thousands of years of living peacefully trading with the Arabs and the Chinese and the Malay) and declared that his jueteng was forbidden by God and thus made it illegal.

Amnesty for President Joseph Estrada , amnesty for Bong Pineda, amnesty for Jose Velarde amnesty for Jose Pidal ,amnesty for M1 & M2.,amnesty for anyone even remotely connected to the jueteng world. Let’s end this charade. Let’s wipe the slate clean. and start a new beginning.Let’s stop carrying the torch for Magellan. Let’s give Lapu Lapu and the Jueteng lord their dues. Let’s amend our constitution to decriminalize and legalize this wonderful game called Jueteng and help the poor.

[…] The issues have to do not so much with the endless problems of the Philippine justice system as with the crisis of credibility of the Arroyo government, which is embroiled in an election fraud scandal. The president is also still reeling from accusations that members of the First Family, like the Estradas, have received money from jueteng (an illegal numbers game) operators. […]