EDITORIAL - Game over for the lottery

For many years now, corruption has been imputed on the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, from the alleged illegal diversion of nearly P366 million in operating expenses to confidential intelligence funds, to the use of PCSO money for partisan purposes in the 2004 general elections.

The PCSO intelligence fund scam kept Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo under “hospital detention” without bail for several years after her presidency on charges of plunder, but she and all her co-accused were eventually cleared by the Sandiganbayan ostensibly for the ombudsman prosecutors’ failure to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

There were also persistent reports that STL or small-town lottery, which the PCSO launched to counter the illegal but popular numbers game jueteng, was in fact being used as a front for jueteng operations. Senators over the weekend estimated that jueteng operators who used STL outlets as fronts were raking in about P73.5 billion a year.

The senators made the assessment after President Duterte late on Friday night made the unprecedented move of ordering the indefinite shutdown of all lotto and STL outlets nationwide amid reports of unspecified cases of large-scale corruption. Malacañang officials promised to provide the details of what prompted the President’s order, even as they assured the public that PCSO charities would continue.

Apart from providing these details, the government must make sure that those responsible for what some quarters are describing as the plunder of public funds are identified, prosecuted and punished. The government has been reminded often enough that the failure to punish the corrupt, from penny-ante extortionists to large-scale plunderers, is the biggest reason for the persistence of corruption in this country. If the criminal-minded believe they can get away with breaking the law, they won’t think twice about using public funds for personal purposes.