The Strong Republic of Jueteng

"Never ask me about my business, Kate!"...Michael Corleone, The Godfather Part II

NTI JUETENG CRUSADERS like Lingayen Archbishop Oscar V. Cruz--one of the Catholic bishops that I DO admire and respect -- are gonna be mad at this news. The President's "Gambling Czar," Puerto Princesa Mayor Edward Hagedorn was telling Ms. Pinky Webb of ABSCBN News last night that President Arroyo has given the go-ahead for the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) to implement the Small Town Lottery. Nice homey-sounding name isn't it? This is the the Palace's way of tackling the illegal numbers game that has already toppled a Presidency, influences and corrupts every level of Society, Church and Government, and promotes a culture of forlorn hope in gambling as a way out of poverty -- by replacing illegal jueteng with ... legal jueteng and calling it by a different name. Yet small-town-lottery is the same thing as Erap Estrada's disastrous Bingo-2-Balls. So is Ed Hagedorn the new Atong Ang?

JDV CHACHA IS DEAD. With No-el dead, I can't see how JDV's Chacha can now prosper. Senators and Congressmen running in 2007 are not going to indulge that parliamentary tune much more. Indeed the Concom's ideas have already been relegated to the arena of public ridicule and rejection. Yet the Palace is way ahead of everybody. The Palace has found a way to fund allies in the local dynasties and fiefdoms and even bribe the local churches and so-called people's organizations into submission--legalized jueteng. With a daily take of 200 million pesos in its various illegal variations throughout Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, the illegal numbers game industry of jueteng grosses twice as much as Globe and Smart and Sun's daily cellphone earnings combined. Given the red-hot attention being paid now to the fertilizer scam story, raiding the plundered National Treasury again can't be done with such extravagance as in 2004.

So Philippine Commentary readers may enjoy a biblical-mathematical backgrounder on jueteng, which is again destined to play a major role in our sorry fates...

FROM THE BIBLICAL BOOK OF REVELATION:

Rev 13:16-18 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six: 666.

FROM THE RULE BOOK OF JUETENG:--

(1) Choose two numbers between 1 and 37.

(2) Bet any amount of money and win if they are chosen in the local daily draw.

Those who are not aficionados of the jueteng numbers game may be wondering what the chances are of winning at jueteng, assuming of course that one is placing a bet with a reputable Jueteng Lord who runs a fair draw (usually done like bingo, with 37 numbered tokens drawn from a bottle or jar). What are the odds of winning the simplest bet in jueteng? It is equal to one chance out of the total number of unique pairs of numbers that can be picked between 1 and 37.

A simple way of figuring out the answer is as follows: Suppose that the two winning numbers in a given jueteng draw are X and Y. There were exactly 37 numbers for the Jueteng Lord to pick from to get the first winning number, X. But there were only 36 ways to pick the second number, Y. But since he could have picked Y before X, the number of possible unique pairs that can be drawn, is 37 times 36 divided by 2. Which is equal to 666, the Number of the Beast! Here is the "official" way to do the same thing using a formula for the numnber of Combinations that can be formed out of 37 things taken two at a time:

You can use the same reasoning to figure out the total number of possible bets, and hence the odds, in Lotto and many other similar games of chance that the Palace is playing.

BUT WILL CHAVIT LIKE IT? Erap Estrada essentially lost his Presidency because his pal, Luis “Chavit” Singson apparently ratted him out to preserve Jueteng's flourishing Northern Kingdom. Amando Doronila once characterized the fall of Erap due to jueteng as a reaction of the local and regional warlords to Erap's brazen attempt to "nationalize" the lucrative racket. According to the Gambling Czar though, this Small Town Lottery is at the option of the local officials. If you "don't have" jueteng in your area you don't need SLT. Hmm, looks like Respect will be a big word again among the capos regime.

MATHEMATICIAN BLAISE PASCAL is credited with much of the modern work on combinatorics and is the beneficial ancestor of Social Weather Stations. He is also famous for something related to gambling, -- PASCAL'S WAGER.

Like Archbishop Cruz, he's one of my heroes too. Here is the Lonely "Cruzader" battling for "Jueteng's Victims." in a post last Friday, exposing why jueteng is not such a victimless pastime as its proponents claim. He also clarifies that the Silent Majority is a Prayer Movement. Hmm, how silent might that be, ultimately?

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