Jueteng
Due to a low buy-in and the prospect of a relatively lucrative payout, it is appealing and often considered harmless fun.
Corruption is common, with police and government officials often being accused of running or benefiting from jueteng operations.
One president of the Philippines, Joseph Estrada, was impeached, removed from office, and found guilty of plunder, in part due to accepting bribes from jueteng lords.
[2][3] José Rizal is perhaps the most well-known early fan of jueteng: he won ₱6,200 while in exile in Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte, which he used in part to buy a farm which is now a historical site.
[11] Although in 1977, a paper by Gloria Chan-Yap was made pointing to Hokkien Chinese as the source of the word, where the author pointed to the terms, "(hue 花 'flower', tn 檔 'space')",[12] though by 1980, the same author would release another paper revising her findings with a different chinese character, now recording "(huê 花 'flower', tŋ̣̆ 擋 'space')".
Indeed as per Carstairs Douglas (1873), it can be found that in the Chinchew or Quanzhou dialect of Hokkien Chinese: 買花當; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: bóe hoe-tǹg means "to gamble in or buy into a game of jueteng".
[18] The latter game is where jueteng in the Philippines comes from as 37 is the traditional number of lottery balls or raffle tickets used to draw out a winning number, but now played with balls or raffle tickets in a tambiolo container that is spun or a bottle-shaped receptacle or small-necked phial receptacle that is shaken, instead of using dice and cards.
The carnival game of tómbola in Spain also refers to the revolving container drum and the place where it is played.
The gambling numbers game started out around the time of the early Ming Dynasty period and grew in popularity during the late Qing dynasty period and spread from Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Tianjin, Beijing, and spread further across Inland China and abroad, such as in Taiwan and the Philippines.
[24] With the restoration of democracy, jueteng networks quickly expanded and became key sources of political information and support, up to the Presidential level.
[33]: §3(a) Some, such as Justice Marvic Leonen, have questioned the wisdom of going after jueteng bettors when other types of gambling, such as Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators, are allowed to freely proliferate.
However, he appointed Jesse Robredo, who worked to eliminate jueteng in the City of Naga while he was its mayor,[42] as Secretary of the Interior and Local Government.
[49] Around the same time, police chiefs were declared responsible if jueteng operations continued to occur under their areas of jurisdiction.
[50] Although much has been tried to eradicate this form of unregulated gambling by the government, all such efforts have failed due to the game's widespread popularity.
[23] In 1987 under the Presidency of Corazon Aquino, the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) first sanctioned and began operating a similar game, called the "Small Town Lottery" (STL).
This choice was made to seemingly detach STL's identity from that of jueteng and decrease the odds of winning.
However, the game was revived in 2005, under the Presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, following which it was asserted that jueteng operations increased.
[3] The Commission on Audit estimates that corrupt PCSO STL practices cost the government a combined ₱14.9 billion in missing receipts in 2017 and 2018.
[56] In an impeachment trial running from December 2000 to January 2001, President Joseph Estrada was charged with "bribery", "graft and corruption", "betrayal of public trust", and "culpable violation of the Constitution".
[25] She became enmeshed in her own political scandal in June 2005, after allegations emerged that some of her relatives, including her husband, son, and brother-in-law, were involved in jueteng operations.
[56] A 2005 Social Weather Stations survey found that over half of all adult Filipinos had engaged in some form of gambling over the previous year.
Despite its popularity, most people reported it as extensively damaging public morality, with a majority feeling this even among non-jueteng playing gamblers.
[63] The low cost of a ticket leads many to consider the gambling relatively harmless,[26] with no-one clearly suffering due to the practice.
Due to the illegality of the game and the subsequent opaqueness and lack of a formal structure, a high degree of trust by the bettor in their kubrador is required.
[21] At one point, it was estimated that 20,000 people in San Fernando, Pampanga, alone derived their primary income from the game.
[23][64] While Jueteng is mostly popular in Luzon, a related numbers game, played predominately in Visayas and Mindanao, is known as masiao.
[41] Masiao originally was played based on radio broadcasts announcing the winning players in jai alai.
However, as jai alai's popularity has waned, illegal masiao operators now often base their winning numbers on the official ones announced by the PCSO.
[66] The 2006 film Kubrador by Jeffrey Jeturian centers on an aging bet collector (played by Gina Pareño) who finds her mundane existence suddenly transformed by an unforeseen series of events as she seeks players for the illegal game of jueteng she helps operate.
[67] This was based on a real-life kubrador, and female informal settler who moved to the capital and spent 30 years in the industry.
