Gambling money a force in Philippine local elections

ANGELES CITY, Philippines, May 2: Six months ago, Mang Ric used to accept bets for an illegal numbers game in the Philippines by writing down wagers on the back of an official lottery form, a method commonly used to throw police off track.

But, since the campaign for May 14 elections started in February, Mang Ric has been openly taking wagers and shouting results of the illegal lottery in his community in Pampanga province, about 80 km north of the capital Manila.

''It's open season now,'' Mang Ric told Reuters. ''People are no longer afraid that they could be arrested for betting. Our collections are growing two-fold. I guess it must be the elections.'' Profits from the illegal game, called jueteng, are immense and organisers are known to support poll candidates in the hope of ensuring protection if they are elected.

In Pampanga alone, as much as 80-100 million pesos 1.7-2.13 million dollars are collected every week from jueteng operations.

Jueteng has grown into an estimated 40 billion pesos industry nationwide, according to a study by a church-based non-government organisation in 2005. It has grown since then and a wide array of officials are paid off, analysts say.

''About a third of the monthly take from jueteng operations are earmarked for buying politicians' loyalties during elections,'' said a political operator. ''All transactions are in cash and nothing passes through banks.'' The money pays for campaign expenses, including posters, T-shirts and propaganda material.

ELECTIONS ''Jueteng subverts elections and undermines the country's democratic system,'' said Oscar Cruz, Roman Catholic archbishop in the northern Pangasinan province and a strong critic of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

''Jueteng money funds crooked politicians, paying for the so-called command votes in the provinces and even buying some of the vote counters themselves.'' Alan Peter Cayetano, an opposition congressman running for a seat in the Senate, agreed, saying he was finding it difficult to fund his campaign.

''It's an open secret that the biggest campaign contributions come from immoral and illegal sources,'' Cayetano said, adding the government team for the Senate had already spent about 3 billion pesos in advertising alone compared to the opposition alliance's 300 million pesos. Half of the 24 seats in the Senate, all 240 slots in the House of Representatives and nearly 18,000 positions in local governments are up for grabs in the May 14 polls.

While political parties fund some of the campaign expenses, candidates are expected to shoulder most of the burden.

Under Philippine election laws, candidates seeking a seat in the Senate are allowed to spend 5 pesos for every eligible voter or around 225 million pesos for the 45 million voters.

They can receive a few extra million pesos from political parties, which are authorised to allocate funds among its candidates subject to a ceiling of 10 pesos per voter, or 450 million pesos.

''In reality, any serious candidate in this year's Senate race would need a minimum of 500 million pesos to nearly 1 billion pesos to win and land in the top six positions,'' said Earl Parreno, political analyst at the Institute for Political and Electoral Reforms.

PAYOFFS Besides advertising, travelling and campaign rallies, the major expenditure for Senate candidates goes to recruiting an army of poll watchers to make sure the votes are properly counted and tallied in more than 300,000 precincts nationwide.

Parreno said about 200-250 million pesos would be spent on an average of two poll watchers guarding votes for three to five days at 200 pesos a day allowance, excluding food and transport.

And then there is the possibility of payoffs to win.

''Candidates who were not prepared to lose are ready to spend more, literally buying their seats through a syndicate of corrupt retired and active election officials,'' said a veteran political worker, citing experiences of past elections.

''This early, we've heard that votes are already being sold at 20 pesos per ballot at a minimum of 10,000-50,000 ballots. In the past, about 600,000 to a million votes were up for sale.'' According to this worker, corrupt poll officials accept money for switching ballots from one candidate to another, usually when they are tallied at the provincial level, where millions of votes are added up.

Rene Sarmiento, an election commissioner, told Reuters he had heard about the selling of votes at a wholesale price, but unless a complaint was filed, nothing could be done.

''We're reshuffling our field personnel to prevent fraud and other illegal activities,'' Sarmiento said.

REUTERS>