IN enduring the national pastime, jueteng, we see Archbishop Oscar Cruz amidst its noisiest center, bringing into the drama testimonies of bagmen being feasted on by the media. With the revelations through Cruz’s coaching of Wilfredo Mayor from Daraga, Albay, at the Senate hearing, the self-confessed operator of the illegal numbers game implicated the First Family into the broiling issue.

We should take note, however, that Cruz is not after financiers, protectors, operators, and lowly bettors. He wants jueteng stamped out of our system to safeguard “kuno” the poor. Keep them out of gambling for it’s immoral. It’s like telling the drunk to stop drinking, to which he immediately retorts, I’m not drunk.

Pampanga’s juetengeros or those in any part of the country are of no other type. They look at their indulgence, albeit barest of enjoyment to others, as a source of livelihood that through the years have tied them over from simple needs and simpler wants. They know that there is a rule against it. When law enforcers catch them, they stop for a while and resurface to the trail when no longer hot.

It can’t be fully considered as a disease. You don’t nourish if it is one. Some operators have even invented the “guerilla” method to prolong their romance with jueteng.

In other words, growing up in the game which they see very ordinary like their parents did and finding pleasure in it against the pretenseful prohibition by authorities, they find no reason to stop betting on the so-called “racket.” Aside, it’s a behavioral booster. It supports their way of life. In jueteng, just like any bettor, one looks into his direct and indirect experiences, say in a dream he holds a snake or kills a pig or while walking one night he meets a pregnant women or witnesses a truck accident with two dead. Or something dreadful is told to him by a friend. All these incidents are assigned numbers and after prioritizing he places money on some combinations with the “correador”. Because it’s a game of chance, sometimes he is correct and this gives him an ultra-sense of rightfulness. More often than not, he is wrong. Nevertheless, his belief on the harmony of numbers and incidents to understand life never diminishes for he then equates his predictions not wrong but weaker than those of others.

So that, the attitudinal connections in jueteng is deep. Yet it starts from double standard – the perception of illegality and of pleasure.

Let’s look at another case also entrenched in our culture, the corrupt politician. He robs the government (take note that the poor’s proximity with it is understandably far), and when he returns to his district he expects his constituents to see him from dawn to dusk, mostly for one thing, financial assistance. The ones who are helped by the politician do not perceive him as thief. You should have proofs. This is moving the heavens. Therefore, he is respected patron. One more, tax to the poor is Mt. Isarog to Mt. Everest, very strange. So on election time, the politician gets the votes of those helped via the double standard.

Erap was eased out of the presidency not because of jueteng. Until now his case has not yet been decided on. He lost his office because he misinterpreted the double standard of what they term as “civil society.”

Can jueteng destroy PGMA? I don’t think so. She is a gifted Ph. D.