EDITORIAL - Why buy the lotto and not check to see if you won?

The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, operator of the Philippine Lotto, has announced that up to P650 million pesos in unclaimed lotto prizes have accumulated over the last 10 years and that this money has now reverted to the agency's charity fund.

It is understood that, under the law, it takes only one year for unclaimed prizes to revert to the agency's fund, so there is no question about that. What is not so easy to understand is why such a huge amount of money remained unclaimed for so long.

If we remember right, the predominant Roman Catholic Church aggressively opposed the introduction of lotto 10 years ago but that the Filipinos, most of them Roman Catholics, ignored this opposition and warmly embraced this game.

There is only one reason why Filipinos embraced the game and that is because the prizes were big enough to be enticing. Winning the lotto offered Filipinos, many of them poor or living on the borderline, the chance for a better life.

To be sure, the odds of winning the grand prize in the lotto are not great, but since we do not have the exact computation of the odds, let us just go by the proverbial "one chance in a million."

To many desperately poor Filipinos, a chance in a million is still a chance, no matter how slim. And for that slim chance in a million, they are willing to part with 10 pesos, the cost of a ticket, if they have any money.

There is no need for any soul-searching here. The Roman Catholics who bet on the lotto know exactly what they want. The logic of economics is very clear to them, and more urgent and persuasive than the tuggings of guilt, which can be dealt later.

For 10 pesos, a desperately poor Filipino gets at least a chance in a million. That is a whole lot better than having absolutely no chance at all if he does not bet. Besides, 10 pesos is no skin off his back. Ten pesos can hardly buy anything at all these days.

Now back to the point of this discussion. When a desperately poor Filipino does buy a lotto ticket, it is for the purpose of winning. Lotto, the way it is accepted in the Philippines, is not a game or a pastime. It is a purpose-driven undertaking. It is a mission.

And that is why we are surprised that so much lotto prize money would remain unclaimed. Why would anyone buy the lotto for a chance to win millions and change his life for the better and then not bother to check if he or she had won?