PCSO chief to Cam: Know your role

The highest ranking official of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) sought to put recently appointed PCSO board member Sandra Cam in her proper place.

Alexander Balutan, PCSO general manager, said Cam’s statement that she would clean up the PCSO was apparently borne by lack of understanding of what a board member’s duties were.

As board member, Cam’s work was limited to policymaking, according to Balutan, speaking to reporters after signing a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the Armed Forces for the PCSO to finance P102 million worth of medical equipment in military facilities nationwide.

Cleaning up the PCSO, as Cam boasted, was part of operations, Balutan said.

“She’s with policymaking and as far as operations is concerned, I handle that as the general manager and chief executive officer,” Balutan said.

He said the PCSO board met twice a month and its members received honoraria, not salaries.

Balutan said that his duty, as PCSO general manager, was to enforce policies that would be approved by the board “through resolutions.”

Cam, said Balutan, “is really with policymaking.”

Full coordination

“She’s saying something else, but as long as they are fully coordinated with us, with the board, there should be no problem,” he said.

President Rodrigo Duterte appointed Cam to the PCSO board on Dec. 6. Shortly after that, Cam held a press conference and declared that small town lottery (STL), which had been designed to combat the popular illegal numbers game “jueteng,” was still
being used as a jueteng front.

In the Dec. 13 press conference, Cam said she was “the only one capable to expose illegal STL operations.”

She said her objective was “to eradicate corruption and this agency (PCSO) has a lot of those.”

Cam and other PCSO board members had been invited to the MOA-signing with the AFP in Camp Aguinaldo, but the only board member who came was Bong Suntay, a former Quezon City councilor.

Cam became known as a whistleblower on alleged links by then first gentleman Mike Arroyo and his son, Mikee, in jueteng.

Balutan was a whistleblower against the Arroyo administration, too. In 2015, he testified at the Senate to detail alleged cheating by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in the 2004 elections, defying Arroyo’s order barring military officials from testifying in the Senate probe.