Panlilio seeks lessons from Baguio antigambling campaign
By Vincent Cabreza
Northern Luzon Bureau
First Posted 20:34:00 08/16/2008
BAGUIO CITY -- IMPRESSED by the city’s success in stopping government gambling projects here, Pampanga Gov. Eddie Panlilio on Friday asked Baguio’s antigambling crusaders to help him reopen a plunder case against gambling lords who were identified with former President Joseph Estrada.
He said the city could also help establish a national political effort aimed at defeating politicians tied to gambling before the 2010 presidential elections.
Panlilio, who was in the city on Friday for several speaking engagements, said stopping gambling money from corrupting future officials is essential to cleaning up the system.
He said he had filed before the Ombudsman a plunder case against suspected “jueteng” financier Rodolfo “Bong” Pineda but some Pampanga officials attacked him for his supposed inefficiency in running the provincial government.
“I don’t want to believe it, but there seems to be a pattern [in their attacks] after I filed the plunder case,” he said.
During the case’s filing in June, Panlilio said Pineda was mentioned more than eight times in the landmark decision that convicted Estrada of plunder last year as having helped the former president amass ill-gotten wealth.
Oversight
He said the exclusion of Pineda from the Estrada plunder case “constitutes a gross oversight of justice which must be remedied, and which [the] complaint seeks to rectify.”
But Estrada said he had neither business dealings nor any “business connection” with Pineda.
Pineda, in earlier interviews, had denied involvement in jueteng operations and alleged gambling-related payoff to Estrada.
Panlilio spoke before businessmen here on Friday morning before meeting the bishop and representatives of various churches about coordinating an antigambling network.
“[Members of the Pampanga Anti-Gambling Council] have been following your progress here,” Panlilio told Baguio Bishop Carlito Cenzon and lawyer Alexander Bangsoy, spokesperson of the Baguio-Benguet Multi-Sectoral Group.
Bangsoy told him the city’s antigambling advocates were loosely formed to battle a proposed casino project for Camp John Hay, eventually turning voters around in 2004 to elect then Councilor Braulio Yaranon, a retired judge who ran for mayor on an antigambling platform.
He said the same group returned this year to fight new applications to operate the government’s small-town lottery (STL) and succeeded.
Cenzon said voters were critical in fighting these proposed gaming projects, but he noted the Baguio fight has not been won because illegal numbers games still exist here.
Baguio neighbors
What seemed worse for the campaign, he said, is the fact that neighboring towns have accepted casinos that draw clients from Baguio.
But Panlilio disagreed.
He said the Baguio group has succeeded because it remained united to fight a social problem “that is as old as Abel.”
Panlilio said the PAGC is about to campaign against the construction of a casino in Bacolor, Pampanga. “We are not where you are yet,” he said, to explain why PAGC has reached out to Baguio.
The PAGC volunteers, who accompanied Panlilio here, said a national network should begin a grassroots campaign “to put a face to gambling.”
Lawyer Maria Elissa Velez, former Pampanga legal officer and a PAGC volunteer, circulated a petition addressed to the Office of the Ombudsman to reopen the plunder cases filed against the alleged gambling lords who paid off Estrada.
Panlilio said the advocates must sustain the public outrage against the corruption of the highest office of the land. The former president was convicted of plunder in September last year, but was pardoned by President Macapagal-Arroyo.
PAGC officials said the first Pampanga petition was not getting attention due to the tension between Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez and Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio.
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