EDITORIAL - Results of gov't betting games must be credible

The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, which operates the Philippine Lottery or Lotto, has just expanded its array of betting games with the introduction of the Ultra Lotto or 6/58 game. The game has a minimum jackpot prize of P50 million, which goes to anyone who correctly gets six winning numbers out of a choice of 58 numbers.

This is not a promotional piece about the game, though, so it is best to leave it at that. But the thing is, the latest expansion suggests that the government, through the PCSO, must be making a lot of money for it to continue expanding. There must be a huge market out there, a patronage so tremendous to necessitate the offering of a wide variety of the same basic game.

Aside from the lotto, there is also the hugely popular three-digit game or Suertres, which is the legal spin-off of the masiao. So influential is this game on the psyche of Filipino bettors that, interestingly, and especially in the provinces, the Suertres has triggered the actual rebirth of the masiao. The results of the legal Suertres now form the basis for the results of some illegal masiao operations.

The creeping hold of all these gambling activities on the lives of Filipinos is amazing. And it is easy to see why. The minimum bet for Suertres is only P10. If a bettor wins, he goes home with P4,500 which is already the monthly salary of a great many underprivileged citizens. Everybody knows P10 in this country can buy virtually nothing. The sheer insignificance and lack of real value of P10 makes it very easy for even the poor to throw it away on Suertres.

The logic is simple. There is almost nothing of value that can be bought with P10. But if you bet it on Suertres, you at least have some chance of going home with a month's salary. Such simple logic has hooked millions of Filipinos to the game. The problem is, it may have also caught the attention of syndicates. Wherever there is gambling, syndicates cannot be far behind.

This is not to say that a government agency like the PCSO is being controlled by syndicates. But the PCSO is duty-bound, both as an agency of government and as a public operator with a clientele of millions, to ensure that the results of all its games are transparent, credible and above board. It owes this much to its huge betting market.

This call was compelled because many Suertres bettors are grumbling about some results that just seem too incredible for their peace of mind. For instance, the results of Suertres last February 6 were 7-2-9 for the morning draw and 0-7-0 for the afternoon draw. But then 7-2-9 came out again for the evening draw. What gives? And this is not the first time it happened but several times. The dynamics of chance just do not get this incredible, unless there is something going on.