Cagayan lawmaker admits his clan used to run jueteng

TUGUEGARAO CITY — Cagayan third district Rep. Manuel Mamba admitted yesterday that his family was one of those behind jueteng operations in this northern province in the 1980s.

But Mamba, now an anti-jueteng advocate, said that since 1992, the members of his family have "once and for all" distanced themselves from any form of illegal gambling.

Mamba recalled that it was his late brother, Leonardo, who first brought up the idea of their family going into jueteng.

"During those times, jueteng was only limited to a small community, unlike now that its operations are centralized and sanctioned by corrupt government officials," said Mamba, whose family is one of the few surviving political clans in Cagayan, along with the Enriles and the Vargases.

Mamba said they eventually yielded to the idea of Leonardo who, incidentally, was ambushed while campaigning for his re-election as Solana town mayor in 1992.

"One of our purposes then," he said, "was to obstruct the group of Col. Rodolfo Aguinaldo, then the provincial commander of Cagayan, (from carrying out) their reported plans to also engage in the same illegal activity."

"So instead of Aguinaldo, who was just a stranger in Cagayan, we (decided to) better run the business ourselves. Instead of him (Aguinaldo) giving us the money, it would be better for us if we were the ones giving him. Why should (we) let them (Aguinaldo’s group) come over us?" Mamba said.

A political rival of the Mambas, Aguinaldo, a native of Pasuquin, Ilocos Norte, won the Cagayan governorship in 1987.

He held on to the position until 1998, when he trounced Mamba for the third congressional district seat.

Mamba avenged their family’s political defeat, trouncing Aguinaldo in their rematch in the 2001 elections. Aguinaldo was slain in June 2001 purportedly by the New People’s Army.

Since 1992, when the Mamba patriarch, Francisco Sr., won as congressman, the clan has never allowed the entry of jueteng in the third district, earning for him numerous citations and awards from government and non-government organizations.