CITY OF SAN FERNANDO?Newly appointed Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo Sunday said he would ask the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) to review the operations of the small town lottery (STL) and verify reports that it was a front for the illegal numbers racket ?jueteng.?

?We need to clarify what?s really happening on the ground,? he said in a phone interview.

Robredo has been directed by President Benigno Aquino III to stamp out jueteng, which is played mostly by the poor. The numbers racket generates billions of pesos for operators, who pay protection money to police, military and government officials.

The PCSO started test runs for the STL in several provinces and cities in February 2006 with the aim of eliminating jueteng. A priest and two bishops have reported, however, that STL is serving as a front for jueteng.

Robredo, a multi-awarded former mayor of Naga City, said removing STL was a ?policy that needed to be defined by the [Aquino] administration.?

In the absence of such a policy, he said STL operations in the meantime should be ?aboveboard? and with safeguards to make sure the government was properly benefiting from its proceeds.

?We should strengthen STL,? he said.

The campaign to stamp out jueteng and the review of STL operations would be done nationwide, Robredo said.

The provinces of Pampanga and Isabela, Robredo said, would not be singled out because the former governors there, Fr. Eddie Panlilio and Maria Gracia Cielo Padaca, respectively, were his colleagues in Kaya Natin!, a movement for ethical leadership and good governance.

Cover for jueteng

In Pampanga, Panlilio and Bishop Pablo Virgilio David had earlier said that STL served as a cover for jueteng.

Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz said the same ploy was happening in other areas.

Jueteng was stopped in the province in September 2007, according to the Pampanga police.

Pampanga Gov. Lilia Pineda claimed that jueteng operations had stopped in her province. The governor?s husband, Rodolfo ?Bong? Pineda, was among the suspected operators called to the hearings when Congress investigated three jueteng scandals in 1998, 2000 and 2005.

Almost identical

STL and jueteng have the same setup. Winning bets in jueteng and STL involve the same pair of numbers chosen from 1 to 40.

In Pampanga, number pairs that STL bettors choose are written on two-inch wide, 14-inch long sheets called ?papelitos (small pieces of paper).?

The first of two sheets comes in yellow and printed with ?PCSO.? The second sheet is a blank white paper. Both sheets do not bear serial numbers or other security marks, making them easy to reproduce.

No official receipt

This system, which includes the non-issuance of an official receipt, makes the proceeds and income from STL impossible to account.

Known jueteng ?kubrador? (bet collectors) and ?cabo? (area managers) have also been tapped in STL operations in Pampanga.

In an earlier interview, Cruz, chair of the Krusada ng Bayan Laban sa Sugal (People?s Crusade Against Gambling), said reports he received indicated that STL operations were used as fronts for jueteng.

?They are one and the same anyway, as the STL uses the same structure of jueteng?same bet collector, same cabo, same ?rebisador? (bet reviewer),? he said.

The winning number pair in jueteng is the same as the winning pair in STL for a particular draw.

The only difference is jueteng operators don?t pay the estimated 35-40 percent tax that STL operators shell out from their collection.

Unused terminals

No official receipts are issued to STL bettors because the PCSO has not used hand-held terminals supplied by a Korean company. The firm has sued the PCSO for non-payment of the terminals.

Already delivered, the terminals were supposed to issue tickets as proof of payment and a record of the number pairs that a bettor had chosen.

The STL terminal project was approved in April 2009 and was intended for 22 STL operators in 16 towns and three cities, Romualdo Quiñones, PCSO STL project director, said in an earlier interview.

Marius Roque, a priest in Pampanga, said Mr. Aquino should also end STL because ?it stands as a front for gambling lords.?

?Legal or illegal, the STL and jueteng both drain the money of the people from their table. If the STL is meant to help the poor, why did they increase the numbers from 37 to 40? The chance of winning became little. If it is really the STL, why doesn?t it have projects in every village? The permit holder gets a lot of money. We see no visible projects,? Roque said.

Before the advent of STL, jueteng bettors choose a pair of numbers from 1 to 37. With the introduction of STL, however, jueteng bettors now have to choose their number pairs from 1 to 40?just like in the PCSO game.

Suncove Corp. remittances

The PCSO said Suncove Corp., the STL agent in Pampanga, remitted P31.9 million to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, P58.8 million to 21 towns and city, P29.4 million to the provincial government, P14.7 million to four legislative districts, P29.4 million to the police and P55.9 million to the PCSO charity fund as of 2009.

But Panlilio said he believed more money should have entered the public coffers if the STL?s collection of bets, remittance and the three draws daily were closely regulated.

He estimated that if bets collected in every barangay amounted to a low of P10,000 per draw, that could have generated P5.1 million from the 510 villages in Pampanga.

Three draws daily can amount to P15.3 million or P459 million in 30 days, he said.

Suncove obtained permits based on Resolution No. 63 of the Pampanga Mayors League in 2006. The PCSO board granted Suncove an authority to conduct a test run in 2006. The permit was renewed in 2008.

?Mission impossible?

Sen. Edgardo Angara said Mr. Aquino might have given Robredo a ?mission impossible? when he ordered the latter to stop jueteng.

?So many Presidents had vowed, tried but failed to stop it because it seems jueteng is so rampant and embedded in our society,? Angara said in a phone interview Sunday.

Even if there had been efforts to ?suppress? jueteng, the senator said the game continued to thrive and was played in most cities and towns around the country.

In Quezon, Senior Supt. Erickson Velasquez, provincial police director, has ordered his policemen to stop the ?guerrilla-type jueteng? operations along the boundaries of the province.

Citing intelligence reports, Velasquez said jueteng activities in the central parts of Quezon had long been stopped by sustained anti-illegal gambling operations conducted by police forces.

?The information that I?ve been receiving lately is about the resurgence of guerrilla-type jueteng bet collections along the provincial boundaries and its draws being held in nearby provinces,? he said in a phone interview.

Gov. David Suarez asked all town officials to support the campaign against illegal gambling. With reports from Christine O. Avendaño in Manila and Delfin T. Mallari Jr., Inquirer Southern Luzon