Insidious illogic in Pagcor privatization

Mainstream media have followed up PeNoy Aquino’s announce-ment of his Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) privatization plan with massive propaganda. Their argument is that since any game of chance is immoral and unproductive, and since Pagcor, the largest gambling operation run by government, is riddled with corruption, that state-owned enterprise needs to be privatized. However, if they truly believe gambling to be immoral and unproductive, shouldn’t they call for its abolition — whether it be in the form of lotteries such as the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) sweepstakes or the Malaysian-led lotto draws — then later Pagcor’s own dissolution?

To only call for privatization contradicts their sworn moral scruples and belies their position as hypocritical, if not insidious. For them to say “Pagcor is corrupt; therefore it must be privatized” is to admit that Aquino and his Pagcor Chairman Bong Naguiat are incapable of instituting any anti-corruption reform as far as gambling is concerned.

As the privatization of Pagcor means its gambling operations will continue, the only change will be to where the revenues will go. For sure, it will no longer benefit government and, in principle, the state’s charities and the President’s Social Fund. It will merely go to private corporate coffers and from thence may likely not be shared with government for its social spending programs at all.

From initial information disclosed to media, the privatized Pagcor being envisioned by PeNoy will be tax-exempt. We can only roll our eyes in amazement at the unbelievable stroke of luck that the favored private party or parties will enjoy. Pagcor’s income amounts to an average of P30 billion or over $600 million every year; and that’s supposed to be a much-needed resource for government to help the poor with.

But the other so-called “logic” for Pagcor’s privatization that trumps the previous one is the massive corruption pervading Pagcor. A top corruption charge that Naguiat has made concerns the 300 Pagcor consultants appointed by his predecessor Efraim Genuino to the tune of P5 million a month or P60 million a year. If such were indeed the case at Pagcor under Arroyo and Genuino (as it most likely was), the direct solution is to file corruption charges against those responsible; prosecute them to the hilt; and make an example of them in the long promised anti-corruption drive of the Aquino government. Refusing to clean up Pagcor, in terms of weeding out those in the career service who collaborate in various corrupt activities and then, cutting out resources that are being frittered away, is akin to throwing the precious baby with the bathwater.

Even doing so at any price is simply not acceptable. If the Aquino government tries to argue that it needs to let go of Pagcor because it is corrupt, then it has no right at all to sit a single minute more!

This illogic of privatization has ruled the country since the time of PeNoy’s mother 25 years ago. Look at what has happened today: All the government assets chosen to be privatized were those that proved productive and earned billions for the nation. Thus, only huge revenue losses for the government and the public (and obscene profits for the corporate oligarchs) ensued. Whether it’s power, oil, water or toll ways, just name it and its profits are now for the oligarchs’ satisfaction.

The Department of Finance’s Cesar Purisima is expectedly supporting Pagcor’s privatization. His finance and Big Business bosses will be getting their hands on the company’s revenues once it is privatized, with the foreign gambling and financial mafia getting their share of the pie. If anyone doesn’t know it yet, the global finance industry has always been tied to gambling — from Monte Carlo to Las Vegas to Macao.

The privatization of Pagcor will lead to an even greater control of the Philippines by gambling and finance syndicates, with narco-politics close behind, as exemplified by NYSE’s Richard Grasso embracing Colombian FARC narco-rebel Raul Reyes in 1999, as well as his part in the compensation controversies that foreshadowed the 2008 Wall Street financial crash.

Truth to tell, the past 25 years of liberalization has seen the country progressively sink into the gambling and narcotic quagmire never seen before.

The privatization of Pagcor is one of the last frontiers in the battle for complete control of RP’s resources which the global and local oligarchs are waging against the people. As each privatization proceeds, the nation only sinks deeper into poverty. Our hope is that the increasing impoverishment imposed through the oligarchy’s newest puppet government may finally rouse the middle class and the masa to awaken and fight back. All oppressed sectors — professionals, small-and-medium scale entrepreneurs, labor, soldiers, plus the ideologically-inspired opposition — must heed this call. Those who continue to turn a blind eye — including those who pose as opposition but kowtow to the Yellow movement — are collaborators to the ongoing plunder and oppression. This is the message the truly concerned, nationalistic forces must continually raise so the people may know. –Herman Tiu Laurel, Daily Tribune

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