In a blow to gamblers, the Court of Appeals has ordered a temporary halt to jai alai operations in the only place in the Philippines where the ball-and-wicker game is allowed to be played.
In a resolution, the appellate court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) directing Meridien Vista Gaming Corp. to stop for a 60-day period its jai alai operations at the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (Ceza) in Sta. Ana, Cagayan.
The court’s little publicized order was dated June 23 and a digital copy of it was e-mailed to the Inquirer at the weekend by Solicitor General Jose Anselmo Cadiz.
Only last week, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima declared illegal the operation of off-fronton betting centers and ordered the arrest of the operators of those betting joints, as well as those collecting the bets.
The appellate court’s resolution suspended the implementation of the orders issued by Aparri Regional Trial Court Judges Oscar Zaldivar and Conrado Manauis blocking an attempt by the Games and Amusement Board (GAB) to stop Meridien from operating jai alai at the Cagayan free port.
The Aparri court’s order had given Meridien basis to operate the game at the 54,000-hectare free port. Thwarted in Aparri, the GAB filed a petition with the Court of Appeals seeking to overturn that order.
“(T)his court, in the exercise of its sound discretion, finds it imperative to grant the petitioner’s prayer for the issuance of a (TRO) so as not to render the resolution of the instant petition moot and academic,” the appellate court said in the resolution penned by Associate Justice Bienvenido Reyes.
Associate Justices Estela Perlas-Bernabe and Elihu Ybañez concurred with Reyes’ opinion.
Atong Ang
Jai alai, which was introduced to the Philippines by Spaniards in 1899, was one of the Filipinos’ favorite pastimes in the 1970s and 1980s.
The late President Cory Aquino banned the game in 1987, and the Supreme Court in 1995 ruled that the game was illegal. Four years later, the administration of Joseph Estrada reintroduced the game in the country.
De Lima said last week the Department of Justice (DoJ) was “looking into reports” that Meridien was owned by Charlie “Atong” Ang, a former gambling buddy and adviser of former President Joseph Estrada.
De Lima alleged it was “widely known that Meridien is Atong Ang.”
July 15 hearing
The appellate court gave Meridien 10 days to submit its comment and the GAB five days to file its reply. It set a hearing for July 15.
In its June 1 petition with the appellate court, the GAB argued that the Aparri RTC judges committed grave abuse of discretion when they issued a TRO and a writ of preliminary injunction prohibiting the state gaming agency from enforcing its own order stopping Meridien from running jai alai operations at the Cagayan free port.
Being a quasi-judicial body, the GAB said it was a coequal of the RTCs as a branch of government.
The GAB, represented by the Office of the Solicitor General, also argued that Meridien had yet to prove that “it has clear legal right” to operate jai alai games through the franchise granted by the Ceza since the issue was still pending before the Supreme Court.
“The validity of (Meridien’s) franchise is still abstract and … is still currently the subject of litigation,” the GAB pointed out.
Link with ‘masiao’
The GAB’s March 3 order had directed Meridien and the owners of all jai alai betting stations to stop their operations for lack of authority to hold jai alai games and establish betting centers within and outside the Cagayan free port.
It said Meridien should secure a “legislative franchise” granted by the Senate and the House of Representatives before it could operate jai alai and betting centers.
In May, government operatives swooped down on Meridien’s office in Rodriguez, Rizal, and arrested six employees for allegedly collecting bets for “jueteng,” an illegal numbers racket.
“This successful operation supported our belief that jai alai and STL (small town lottery) were just legal covers of illegal gambling operations,” Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo told the Inquirer at the time.
Supt. Wilfredo Pornillos of the Office of the Internal Security at the interior department, said the arrested Meridien personnel said that they were using mobile phones to coordinate the collection of bets in Rodriguez.
“But during our raid… their (jai alai) computers were suspiciously offline. Their papelitos (bet collection paper) were written with numbers from one to 37 indicating (that) they were not collecting jai alai bets,” Pornillos said.
Robredo also said he had been receiving reports that results of jai alai games, which are televised, were being used to draw winning combinations for “masiao,” a popular but illegal numbers game in Visayas and Mindanao.
Police sources in Camp Crame had also told the Inquirer that a certain Alex Yu and his brother Vic-vic, believed to be Ang’s close associates in Cebu, were the operators and financiers of masiao in Visayas.
Ruel Lasala, the National Bureau of Investigation intelligence chief, said the NBI had yet to implement De Lima’s order to crackdown on Meridien’s betting joints outside the Cagayan free port and arrest individuals collecting bets for them.
“We are now strategizing our nationwide campaign. We’re still holding meetings with our officers since we received the order only last Friday,” Lasala said.