Police chief teamed up with ‘gambling lord’ in cockfight?

SAN FERNANDO CITY, Pampanga — "Nambubutas lang kayo (You are only finding fault)."

These were the words of Senior Superintendent Sonny Cunanan, this city’s police chief, reacting to talks making the rounds of cockfighting aficionados here that he and an alleged gambling lord recently teamed up in a cockfight derby.

Sources, including an incumbent mayor who requested anonymity, said the police colonel teamed up with Mario Garcia, often included in the list of suspected gambling lords in the province, in a seven-cock derby. The pair reportedly won a "guaranteed prize" of P500,000.

The derby, held at the Pampanga Coliseum here over a week ago, was reportedly hosted by another alleged gambling lord, Melchor Caliwag alias Ngongo, who was said to have lost some P6.9 million during the derby.

The following day, the numbers 6 and 9 were said to be the winning jueteng combination but there were no winners.

In a pooled interview with local reporters, Cunanan, however, denied the talks, saying he merely watched the derby.

He said he is a cockfighting aficionado, raising fighting cocks himself.

According to Cunanan, Garcia, indeed, won in the derby, but his (Garcia’s) partner was a mayor from Pangasinan whom he could not identify.

However, another Pampanga mayor, who asked not to be named, claimed that Cunanan was Garcia’s partner during the derby.

The source said that when Cunanan and Garcia won 6.5 games as against six games won by a team from Santiago City, Isabela, the former tandem allegedly agreed to the latter team’s proposal to share the P1-million guaranteed prize which Caliwag allegedly offered for the overall winner regardless of the outcome of the seventh game.

A bettor earns one point for every game won and .5 for a draw where no cock is declared winner, as when both fowls die during the fight.

"Cunanan might have shared half of the P1 million with his partner, but he must have earned more than that from the bets of other people during each event. It was a big-time derby where people bet several hundreds of thousands per game," said another cockfighting aficionado.

"Caliwag could have earned a huge sum by sponsoring the big derby, but it so happened he lost heavily by fielding eight cocks for each of the seven fights," alleged one observer who claimed often seeing Cunanan in past derbies betting as much as P110,000 per game.

Caliwag, who reportedly wants to run for barangay chairman in highly populated Barangay Dolores here, owns a three-story building along the Gapan-San Fernando-Olongapo (GSO) Highway here and has businesses in this city.

In an interview at Clark Field last week, Interior and Local Government Secretary Joey Lina identified Caliwag as among the suspected big-time gambling lords in Central Luzon.

While jueteng has been curbed in other parts of Luzon, Lina said the illegal numbers game has remained problematic in Pampanga.