MANILA, 2 June 2005 — A Roman Catholic leader urged President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday to cooperate in the Senate investigation on the “jueteng” controversy and help stamp out illegal gambling activities in the Philippines.

Bishop Oscar Cruz, the archbishop of Lingayen and Dagupan, said the president’s cooperation was needed to set an example for her underlings.

At the same time, Senate President Franklin Drilon asked Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez to inhibit himself from a government task force formed to investigate “jueteng” payola allegations because he prejudged a witness in the Senate probe.

Drilon said Chief Prosecutor Jovencito Zu?o, a career official, should take over as head of the task force.

Cruz and Drilon made their suggestions amid an apparent administration effort to discredit and scare off witnesses.

On Tuesday night, gunmen were reported to have strafed the house of Senator Manuel “Lito” Lapid in barangay Cangatba in Porac, Pampanga.

At least three friends of Pampanga Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo, son of the president, also filed a criminal charges against Wilfredo Mayor, one of the witnesses presented by Bishop Cruz to the Senate.

Lapid’s chief of staff, Benalfre Galang, said it was possible that the attack on the senator’s house “have something to do with the jueteng probe.”

Lapid, as head of the Senate committee on games and amusement, co-chairs the joint committee investigating the jueteng scandal.

Lapid earlier told his colleagues that he had been receiving threats on his life not to pursue the inquiry.

Two days after witness Mayor tagged Transportation Assistant Secretary Rene Maglanque, former Vice Mayor Arturo Naguit of Minalin town in Pampanga, and stockbroker Leon Katigbak, the three ran to the Department of Justice and filed charges of false testimony and libel against him.

Mayor, a confessed former jueteng operator, had identified them as “bagmen” for Representative Arroyo, whom he alleged to have received 600,000 pesos in monthly protection money when he was vice governor of Pampanga province.

Mikey Arroyo had also been tagged as one of the major beneficiaries of jueteng money, together with his father Juan Miguel “Mike” Arroyo and uncle Ignacio Arroyo, a representative for Negros Oriental province.

President Arroyo has ordered the task force that she formed not to spare anyone.

Bishop Cruz, however, said that the president should do more by helping probers instead of labeling him as a “destabilizer.”

“I’ve been calling on the government to stamp out jueteng for four years now,” he said, recalling that when Arroyo was vice president, he had asked her to help rid the country of jueteng on three occasions when she visited his diocese between 1998 and 2001. “She told me yes, but it is still here.”

He said the president and her supporters, instead of denouncing the Senate inquiry as a plot orchestrated by the opposition to undermine her government, should “cooperate and help the truth come out.”

Cruz has been in the forefront of the campaign against the illegal numbers game, which he said had grown to a P13-billion-a-year industry under the Arroyo administration.

More Witnesses

Cruz has said at least four more witnesses — all jueteng “bagmen” who allegedly had handed over gambling payola to some of the people mentioned by Mayor in Monday’s hearing — are to appear at the resumption of the inquiry next Monday.

He said more witnesses were willing to testify on the jueteng menace but they were afraid Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez would make good his threat to slap charges against jueteng whistle-blowers.

Senator Drilon said the task force created by the president may not be able to function effectively unless Gonzales inhibits himself. “How can Secretary Gonzales conduct an impartial investigation when he had already declared that the witness, Mr. Mayor, was lying to the Senate and could be charged criminally in court?”

“Having said that, I wonder how government prosecutors under Secretary Gonzalez could ever rule that there is no prima facie evidence against Mayor,” said Drilon. “Will they dare contradict their own boss?”

“For opening his mouth to media too often, too soon, I am afraid Secretary Gonzalez has deprived himself of the public perception that he can be an impartial investigator in this highly sensitive and emotional controversy,” he said.

In interviews with the media, Gonzalez expressed a contrary view from that of the senators who assured Mayor that he would be immune from prosecution.

Gonzalez dismissed Mayor’s testimony as “hearsay” and and said it “lacks substance.” He added that the DoJ would file criminal charges against Mayor for operating “jueteng” in Bicol, Pangasinan, and Baguio.

National Police

Meanwhile, Director General Arturo Lomibao admitted that the Philippine National Police cannot stop jueteng operations.

“That is the reality on the ground,” Lomibao told members of the House committee on public order and security, which is also inquiring into the illegal numbers game.

Lomibao declared the country “jueteng-free” at 5 p.m. last Friday, but yesterday he said the PNP did not have enough personnel and resources to conduct daily raids on illegal gambling dens.

He expressed support for a proposal in Congress to revise Republic Act No. 9287 — the law passed in 2004 imposing harsher penalties on those engaged in illegal gambling — to address its flaws.

Saying that the jueteng scandal was a “national embarrassment, especially for us in the government,” committee chair Pangasinan Representative Amado Espino Jr. summoned Lomibao and other PNP officials to explain their failure to stamp out jueteng and look into the “pros and cons of legalizing a national malady.”

Under questioning, Lomibao did not state a categorical position on proposals to legalize jueteng or other games of chance. “But maybe I can venture into (stating an) opinion without fear of deviating from the institutional position of the PNP, which is that (jueteng) should not be legalized,” Lomibao said.

He said his “personal view” was in support of a “well-researched study” by a retired police officer, Superintendent Wally Sumbrero.

(Additional input from the Inquirer News Service & agencies)