Police powers with no policeman

We rejoice with the Filipina athletes who have produced all four of the gold medals for the Philippines in the still on-going 2018 Asian Games taking place in Indonesia. Hidilyn Diaz claimed the country’s first gold in weightlifting, and the women’s golf team headlined by Yuka Saso secured the individual and team gold medals in their event. And last Wednesday, 19-year-old Cebuana Margielyn Didal won gold medal in her skateboarding event at the Asian Games.

This is our country’s amateur sports at its best.

Such medal feat of our athletes naturally inspired our lawmakers to press for the passage into law of a long pending bill that seeks to create a Department of Sports.  Several bills were filed at the 17th Congress calling for this sports body at the Executive Department that would focus on the developments of sports in the country from the grassroots and take care of the welfare of our athletes.

In fact, among the prime movers of this bill include our so-called “pambansang kamao,” world boxing champion Sen. Manny Pacquiao along with his 1-PACMAN party list representatives Mikee Romero and Eric Pineda as principal authors in the 17th Congress. Romero filed House Bill 287 creating the Department of Sports during the first regular session of the 17th Congress. The bill has been pending with the House committee on government reorganization.

The proposed legislation is also strongly supported by the House committee on games and amusement chairman Paranaque Rep.Gustavo Tambunting and chairman Baham Mitra of the Games and Amusement Board (GAB).

The GAB, headed by Mitra, is urging the 17th Congress to also strengthen and empower the sports regulatory body to protect not only the professional sportsmen but more so all the sports-loving Filipinos.

Like our amateur athletes, the current situation of professional Filipino sportsmen is far from ideal.

During our Kapihan sa Manila Bay news forum last Wednesday at Café Adriatico, Congressmen Tambunting, Pineda and Mitra discussed the various proposed legislations which all seek to improve the lot of our country’s amateur athletes and professional sportsmen.

While Filipinos maybe generally sports-loving people, some, however, turn it into lucrative gambling activity. This is the evil downside of being addicted to some form of gambling evolving from games and competitions by betting on the odds on contests and competitions of athletic skills from basketball or volleyball or whatever games or sports maybe.

Gambling, undoubtedly, is part and parcel of any country’s culture, not only in the Philippines. The GAB is precisely the government agency mandated to protect the public from illegal gambling that bedevils many of these regulated sports and amusement games. Even the forms of illegal gambling have leveled up with the advent of modern technology.

Would you believe cockfighting – the most popular pastime of many Filipinos, especially in the countryside – there is now e-sabong or electronic betting that goes with its live-streaming?

As Mitra explained to us during the Kapihan sa Manila Bay, while the actual cockfighting is being done legally somewhere in Metro Manila or any parts of the country, one operator of e-sabong conducts betting-on-line. This is illegal since it operates without a franchise from the government through which the State can regulate it to protect the betting public and collect revenues from it. 

The discovery of such clandestine e-sabong came out in the open when horse-racing owners complained to GAB about the off-track betting stations (OTBs) for horse-racing in Metro Manila were being allegedly used in the illegal operations on cockfighting games and betting.

The reported proliferation of e-sabong allegedly piggybacking on OTBs was looked into by the House committee in a full-blown public hearing last week with Mitra as among those called to shed light on the matter. At the House hearing, the legal opinion rendered by the Office of the Solicitor General showed the e-sabong is deemed illegal if it has no franchise granted by Congress. Based on this Sol-Gen legal opinion, e-sabong should be placed under the regulation of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor).

At the end of the public hearing, the House panel headed by Tambunting decided to suspend operations of all e-sabong and directed the GAB chief to enforce the lawful order. After raiding these OTBs doing e-sabong, Mitra found himself charged before the Ombudsman for carrying out his mandate as GAB chairman. 

Aside from illegal bookies on horse-racing, the GAB chief vowed to beef up their campaign at detecting gambling and game-fixing in other sports such as professional basketball, boxing and martial arts.

“Anti-illegal gambling is crucial in our mandate to regulate professional sports,” Mitra pointed out. This is why, Mitra was disappointed when former Philippine National Police (PNP) director-general Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa denied his letter-request to detail at least 12 policemen to the compose GAB’s anti-gambling law enforcement unit.

Faced with no law enforcers of the anti-gambling laws, the GAB chief sought the assistance from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to provide the same number of personnel on detail upon request of the agency.

Following the retirement of Dela Rosa and the appointment of new PNP chief Oscar Albayalde, Mitra disclosed, he sent a new letter-appeal reiterating the same request. Mitra hopes with optimism the GAB request would this time get favorable reply from the new PNP chief.

The GAB chief is under the Office of the President and receives around P100 million in annual budget.

The GAB’s mandate finds boost following the repeated policy declarations made by President Rodrigo Duterte to go all out against illegal gambling now that his administration’s anti-illegal drugs campaign has gained so much headway.

This is why, Mitra believes, President Duterte will weigh in favor of the GAB request to the PNP. As it is right now, the GAB has police powers but with no policemen.