Lucky season

ELECTION season is said to be synonymous with jueteng season — which is not to say that the illegal numbers game isn’t going on during other times. It’s just that elections require the kind of money that can be generated fast by the likes of jueteng, which is said to become even more popular as the campaign heats up and the polls near.

This week, i Report‘s series on local bosses features Batangas Governor Armando Sanchez, whose claim to infamy three years ago was that he was among the country’s lords of jueteng. Sanchez has consistently denied being such, but the rumors persist, even among his constituents. According to Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz, who is known for his nationwide anti-jueteng crusade, Sanchez was said to be a major jueteng operator in his province as far back as 2001. But the archbishop says other people are now running the game in Batangas, although he said they were using Sanchez’s name.

“We don’t know if he knows this or not,” Cruz says. “They said he allows them to operate, that he gives them the go-signal.” This means, he says, Sanchez may “not (be) operating as directly as before.”

Jueteng rumors, however, may not be Sanchez’s only problems, and Archbishop Cruz is apparently not the only prince of the Church who is not too happy with him. Lipa Archbishop Ramon Arguelles has said of Sanchez, “The worst crime that Armando Sanchez committed in Batangas is his being a governor. He created that black spot in the history of Batangas when there wasn’t any achievement that could have helped the people. All that darkest time in the history of Batangas could speak of was the heightened criminality and violence.”

Read on at pcij.org.