Senate hearing on PCSO: bizarre and intriguing
In response to Senator Leila de Lima’s resolution calling for an inquiry in aid of legislation into how government agencies can perform their mandate and their officers to discharge their functions without the improper influence and interference of parties with vested interests and dubious reputations as revealed by the internal squabble at the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, Senate Committee on Games and Amusement Chair Panfilo Lacson conducted an inquiry into PCSO’s charter and other issues pertaining to its operations the other week.
The Senate hearing however took a bizarre turn when resource persons transformed it into a forum by which they expressed their personal grievances against PCSO officers and hit back at their offenders. Subsequently, the resource persons practically took control of the proceedings, asking other resource persons to testify under oath and even warning them not to lie, and naming other people who should testify. On the second day of the hearing, Senator Lacson seemed to have turned over the hearing to members of the House of Representatives as they did most of the questioning,
The proceedings opened with Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Villafuerte, Jr. accusing the PCSO of failing to stop a gaming firm from engaging in “illegal gambling in the guise of operating a lawful STL.” In reaction, Senator Lacson raised the possibility of ending the operations of small town lottery ( STL) throughout the country if the PCSO cannot take on the job.
PCSO General Manager Alexander Balutan said they are not tolerating any violation. “We summoned the PNP and asked them to investigate such violations. We do not have police power,” Balutan explained. To which Lacson said the PCSO, not the Philippine National Police, is still “ultimately responsible” since they give gaming firms authority to operate. In the province alone, STL operations have a gross collection of P5 million daily, but these are not properly remitted, Lacson said.
After Balutan had used up the three minutes allotted him, Lacson asked resource person Charlie “Atong” Ang to speak. Ang introduced himself as a businessman, consultant to PAGCOR, Jai Alai, and Meridian where he is also operations manager. He said his appearance in the hearing is to serve as resource person and to expose the stink in PCSO.
Atong Ang then launched a monologue denying the accusations of then PCSO chair Jose Jorge Corpus and General Manager Balutan that he is a gambling lord and that his operations are illegal, narrating that he met with President Duterte twice at the instance of the latter and not because he was applying for STL, describing in great detail how the two PCSO officers treated him rudely and referred to Sandra Cam disrespectfully, and lecturing on the charter of PCSO and on what charity really means.
All the time he was talking he was looking at Balutan angrily, his right hand pointed at him in a castigating manner. He referred to Corpus and Balutan by of doling out charity funds to both rich and poor patients, the anomalous contracts, and the control of STLs by gambling lords. She was about to go into the details of the corruption in PCSO, holding up high a picture of a woman with the Eiffel Tower in the background when Lacson told her to focus on the PCSO charter first. Still, she managed to identify the woman as Balutan’s consultant who “lords over” PCSO procurements below P1 million, including the purchase of expensive corporate giveaways and the large food baskets distributed during the Christmas party.
On the second day of the hearing, on Feb. 12, resource person of any malfeasance with regard to the “lavish” Christmas party. “That doesn’t matter to me,” said the President hours after Cam slammed Balutan. The day after, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque revealed that the infighting among Social Security System officials prompted the President not to reappoint Amado Valdez and Jose Gabriel La Vina to the SSS. Would the President make a similar decision with regard to the PCSO officials?
The active participation of members of the House in a Senate committee hearing is intriguing enough. But when Lacson, Congressmen Romeo Acop and Amado Espino, all former highranking officers of the Philippine National Police and alumni of the Philippine Military Academy formed the hearing panel and Balutan, a retired Marine general and also a PMA graduate being the principal resource person, not to mention the presence of 14 active senior police officers, the hearing caused many to wonder if there is any significance to the involvement of many PMA graduates.
There is something common among Lacson, Balutan, and Cam. They all have hostile feeling towards former president Gloria Arroyo. Even Congressman Villafuerte may be considered unfriendly to Arroyo.
Lacson ran against President Arroyo in the 2004 presidential elections. He was ordered arrested for the murder of Bubby Dacer during the presidency of Arroyo. Balutan, then a Marine colonel assigned in Central Mindanao in 2004, testified in the Senate that Arroyo had committed election fraud in the 2004 presidential elections. Cam testified in the Senate in 2005 that Arroyo’s son Mikey and brother- in- law Iggy were receiving payola from gambling lords. Villafuerte is estranged son of Luis Villafuerte, a staunch political ally of Arroyo.
Does the mention of Bong Pineda, known funder of Arroyo in all the elections she ran in, in the Senate hearing as the financier of illegal gambling in many provinces suggest a hidden agenda on the part of any of the principal characters in the ongoing inquiry into PCSO?