PCSO exec dares critics to prove claims on STL

Embattled Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) general manager Alexander Balutan yesterday challenged his detractors to prove their assertion that he is not effectively managing the Small Town Lottery (STL) operations nationwide.

Balutan said that he will resign from his post if critics could prove their claims especially the allegation that the STL could earn as much as P6.5 billion a month.

“Now, I pose this challenge to everyone. If anybody can produce the STL P6.5 billion monthly gross revenue as being touted by the genius of the Senate and Atong Ang, I will resign as GM today,” Balutan said in a statement.

Balutan issued the challenge as he faced accusations of corruption before the Senate committee on games and amusement last Wednesday in a hearing to tackle the proposed amendments to the PCSO charter.

“I was accused of shortchanging the government of the revenues supposedly earned from STL with the insinuations that I benefit from it,” Balutan said.

The PCSO, in a statement, claimed that the agency had made history on its STL operations when it generated P15.7 billion for 2017, or P1.3 billion a month.

The current STL revenues are more than triple the P4.7 billion earned by the PCSO from the STL in 2016.

Balutan was then a Marines colonel when he testified in the Senate on alleged cheating during the 2004 presidential elections.

“I have spent more than 37 years of my adult life in the Marine Corps, twothirds of it in the battlefront. I have survived more than 50 combat encounters and four ambushes against the enemy of the state that most of my detractors never experienced in their lives – in my solemn oath to protect our motherland,” said Balutan.

In 2011, Balutan was one of 10 military personnel who received the TOPS award, given out annually by Metrobank Foundation in partnership with the Rotary Club of Makati.

He was cited for his successful campaigns against Muslim rebels and for forging a peace pact among 18 mayors in Lanao del Sur and Marawi City before the 2004 elections when he was battalion commander.