Broken

While the politicians were taking their turns grandstanding and preaching about the social ills of gambling, the BSP simply moved in and ordered the e-wallet companies to take down all links to the gambling platforms. That might not fully solve the problem, but it spares all of us one talking point the politicians might blabber about.

In a pretty decisive move, the BSP gave the e-wallets 48 hours to de-link from the gambling platforms. That deadline ends today. Spokesmen from Maya and GCash announced they will abide by the directive. They have no choice: the e-wallets are supervised by the BSP.

De-linking the gambling platforms will, of course, diminish the earnings of the e-wallets. It will make it more tedious for gamblers to place bets and therefore reduce gambling volumes if not propensity. But gamblers will eventually find a way to go around the barriers. The illicit persistence of e-sabong despite the outright government ban tells us that.

De-linking the gambling platforms from the e-wallets is like banning the liquor stores from accepting credit cards. It will not solve alcoholism. The drunkards will simply be condemned to the infernal inconvenience of carrying cash to the stores.

Yet it serves the interest of some parties here to divert attention away from the real solutions by using the e-wallets are scapegoats. During the Senate hearing on online gambling, Sen. Rodante Macoleta cut through the fog of melodramatic speeches and delivered this truth bomb: online gambling exists because operators exist and because regulators let them run wild.

The irrepressible Marcoleta took his colleagues to task for “barking up the wrong tree.”

It is PAGCOR that issues gaming licenses. PAGCOR oversees the regulatory environment where online gambling proliferates. If there is a problem, it is because the regulatory framework is broken. It is PAGCOR’s task to fix that problem.

The first duty of PAGCOR, in the midst of this controversy, is to publish the list of every licensed online gambling operator – just as government recently produced the list of contractors for flood control projects. This will allow the public to examine the sort of people behind these presumably profitable rackets.

In fact, PAGCOR should have come to the Senate hearing with that list in hand. But they did not.

Next, PAGCOR should have come with a menu of policy options to help us get a handle on the online gambling scourge. But they did not.

What they did was to try and deflect the issue by trying to make it appear that advances in financial technologies caused the problem. Sen. Risa Hontiveros helped them do this by turning the problem on its head and asking the gaming platforms to de-link from the e-wallets. Fortunately, the decisive BSP action turned the problem right side up.

Sen. Win Gatchalian seconded Marcoleta’s penetrating observations. He argued that the so-called “know-your-customer” safeguards undertaken by the gambling platforms were flimsy at best. Anyone can still sign up and play unimpeded.

If entry cannot be regulated, then we might as well outrightly ban online gambling.

Endless litigation

For two decades or more, the BCDA and the Sobrepeña-led Camp John Hay Development Corporation battled in court overt the terms of the contracts the two entities entered into. Today, except for the matter of unfortunate third parties who bought long-term leases for property in the former US military base, the court cases are largely settled.

A new front appears to be opening. The Baguio City government is demanding the BCDA complies with the 19 conditionalities agreed upon for the development of the area. Of these conditionalities, the most pressing ones refer to the payment of the city government’s share of the revenues of the resort.

Condition 1 provides that the share of Baguio City from CJH is 25 percent of the lease rental or 30 percent of the net profit from the operation, whichever is higher. After the expiration of the contract, Condition 16 provides the 247 hectares which are the subject of the contract of lease shall be turned over to the city government without obligation for the city to pay the value of improvements on the property. The Supreme Court last year ruled that the contract between the BCDA and the Camp John Hay Development corporation had expired.

These two conditions, by themselves, promise a windfall for the city government. This windfall could not come at a better time. The city government is being squeezed for resources by the guardians of the nation’s purse who are not pleased with Mayor Benjamin Magalong’s crusade against corruption.

Last June, the Baguio mayor wrote a letter to the BCDA asking the government agency to comply with the 19 conditions agreed upon. Most of the court decisions involving the former military base upheld the validity of these conditions.

Rep. Mauricio Domogan, representing Baguio’s lone district, called on the community to pull together and support Magalong’s call – although he thought the mayor’s letter is a bit too polite. Domogan and Magalong are more frequently rivals in local politics.

Domogan argues that the city government take appropriate court action to compel the BCDA to comply with the 19 conditions embedded in the lease agreement with the city. He offers to serve as witness in such court proceedings.

With the congressman from Baguio taking a harder line, is seems likely the BCDA will again find itself in court.