Cloned

If only our illegal gambling syndicates applied their immense creativity to solving our economic problems. They might yet save us from the coming economic meltdown.

In Pangasinan, illegal gambling networks have managed to clone the Small Town Lottery (STL) system and used this to divert bets to their own system. This is how jueteng now operates.

Across the province, bookies collect bets openly. The bets are placed in a shadow gambling system run by the gambling lords. This parallel system saves on operations costs by hijacking the operations of the state-sun STLs: daily draws follow the STL’s schedule and the winning numbers in the illegal system are simply copied from the legal draws.

Ironically, the STL system was established precisely to stamp out the old jueteng networks. But by shadowing the STL system, the old gambling lords recovered credibility for their illegal operations. They cured any doubts about “cooking” the winning numbers by copying the results of the legal STL draws.

In the areas where the shadow betting system proliferates, local governments generally tolerate them. The illegal gambling operations are carried out openly and in plain sight.

Occasionally, police raids are conducted to bust the illegal parallel gambling operations. But because they do not use the traditional drawing paraphernalia, little evidence could be used against them. All the police could grab are the bookies – the foot soldiers of the illegal gambling networks who carry records of bets placed.

The foot soldiers are familiar – and trusted – members of the community. They ply their trade along the streets and serve as purveyors of local news as well as conduits of patronage dispensed by the gambling lords.

The persistence of illegal gambling networks shadowing the government-sanctioned STL threatens the viability of legal betting networks. They are patronized less by the locals than the age-old jueteng networks.

Although they might resemble each other, the illegal gambling networks and the STL are two completely different animals. The illegal networks feed gambling lords who frequently use their wealth to dominate electoral politics in the localities. The STL supports charity through contributions to local governments.

Launched in 2006 precisely to combat illegal gambling syndicates, the STL is supervised by the PCSO. It has evolved into the second most profitable product for the PCSO.

But if the local governments do not help quash the illegal gambling networks free-riding on the STL, the PCSO will have less money available to support the needs of our towns and cities.

Modular

Some creative juices, on the other hand, do help meet our most urgent social needs.

Recently, President Marcos visited the facilities of Concrete Stone Corporation in Mariveles, Bataan. The company is producing prefabricated components for classrooms and school buildings.

Built in a factory setting, the modular classrooms are assembled efficiently on site. The quality of the prefabricated components are standardized. The process brings down construction costs and allows quicker construction time.

Also important, given the public works scandals, the modular classrooms will reduce leakage to the corrupt. Prefabrication narrows the margins for the syndicates that still infect public construction works.

We know the severity of the classroom gap plaguing Philippine education. Using old methods, it will take us decades to solve the yawning classroom gap.

With the new technologies in prefabricating construction materials, private groups and local governments may now participate in the broad effort to build the classrooms our young direly need. This will ensure absolute compliance with the building standards set by the Department of Education and guarantee uniformity of our schools. Variations in design and construction standards will cease to bedevil our effort to build the classrooms we need.

According to industry insiders, Concrete Stone Corporation is moving towards closer operation integration with ABG Modular, a subsidiary of Asiabest Group – a rapidly growing construction conglomerate. Asiabest has introduced new technologies to standardize construction processes. Standardization will pave the way to prefabrication. The end result will be more efficient construction methods and lower costs.

More economical construction processes will help us meet our infrastructure needs across the board. The innovation happening in this sector will change the way we do things: from tailor-made construction to mass producing edifices.

This will help our economy manage in these stressful times.

Endless

The Philippines suffers the highest spike in fuel prices in all of Asia. This is what we pay for the absence of proactiveness by our government as the global economic crisis deepens.

The anxiety among our people is palpable. Over the past few days, people have approached me to ask when this war-inflicted global crisis will end. My standard reply is: the war will probably be endless and the crisis will begin to ease up only after the global economy has hit recession.

This is not a reassuring reply. But this is what the facts on the ground tell us.

Both Iran and Israel are doctrinaire rivals with a yawning civilizational gap between them. Each is governed by factions bent on eradicating the other from the face of the earth.

Recent actions indicate the US is preparing for a ground war in Iran. This will prolong the conflict, make resolution more unreachable and lead to the destruction of more oil, gas and petrochemical facilities modern civilization relies on. The broken global supply chains will take even longer to repair.

A ground war is an insane option.