ERAP’s Conviction and the Numbers Game

My decision to abandon a promising career in the country was in response to my father’s insight on the state of affairs of the nation when Joseph Estrada became President. He foresaw the inevitability from his own personal assessment of the things going on at that time. My conversation with him (the last one) was at the closing hours of FVR's term as President. In his words of advice, he told me to go ahead with my plans of bringing my family to the states because with ERAP as President, the country “will be flushed down the drain!” He did not live long enough to see the backlash and the anger of a people who took ERAP out of power while he was still in the process of doing so.

To me ERAP acted the way a typical Filipino who gets a taste of power will act. Reign as the King! Being President was the ultimate. As the cliché goes “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. We see them strutting around in the cockfighting arenas, the casinos, the bars and the nightspots along Ermita ---councilors, mayors, governors, congressmen, senators. As ERAP passed through these political rung from his silver screen days he flaunted his power. He womanized, gambled, joined cockfights, drunk with his “compadres” and listened to his cordon-sanitaria who enticed him on different ways to fleece the people in the form of juicy contracts. Syndicating the underground economy churned by the illegal numbers game was the ultimate. Whoever whispered this idea to his ear ought to be shot along with him.

Yet we have a lot of “eraps” scattered across the country. The conviction of the model by the Sandiganbayan would hardly put a dent on the score of high and mighty that practice this anomalous culture. The attempt to nationalize the illegal numbers brought a President’s downfall. Yet the game still exists. The numbers game is back to its old form. As we have seen, it can only go as far as provincial or regional territories. No one can say this is all mine, Erap's mistake. The model got greedy and he has to pay the price for it. Yet to a lot of Filipinos, ERAP didn’t do anything wrong. Why so? Gambling is an acceptable past time to most Filipinos. Whether the game is illegal or not, they don’t care. In fact the illegal numbers game of jueteng cannot be stopped primarily because there is a big market thriving in the numbers game. All public officials and the police are aware of this. No law can stop the illegal numbers game. And the smaller eraps scattered across the country who have rationalized that the numbers game is a victimless crime just as the model Erap has apparently rationalized, now benefit from the game. The sandigangbayan has its work cut out for them. Because they have convicted the model ERAP, they have in effect declared a war on the other eraps across the country. Who will be next? Still, prospective Presidentiables need to have a stand on this very sensitive issue and push for a standard of moral decency in the bureaucracy that everyone will follow.