PINOYS PROPENSITY FOR GAMBLING ONCE AGAIN WILL AFFECT THE PH 2022 ELECTION

 

Reporter: Does this [running for the presidency] the party's convincing Mayor Sara Duterte?

Senator Bato: I don't know if they talked about it. As for me, I am running to become the next President of the Republic of the Philippines.

Reporter: Sir, is this not a mockery of the election process?

Senator: Why? Do I look like a mockery to you? I won as a senator. Number 5 in the last election. Is it a mockery to the 19 million Filipinos who voted for me as a senator of this republic?

Question: Dear Reader, do you think the 19 million Pinoys that voted for Senator Bato believe he would be worthy of being addressed as President Bato?

Before you answer the question, I suggest you read the following article which may help formulate your answer.

"People participate in Philippine elections for the same reason they go to cockfights, it is highly entertaining as spectator sports," wrote Joel Rocamora of the Institute for Popular Democracy in his article Formal Democracy and its Alternatives in the Philippines. Hyperbole? Or, there's more to the statement than meets the eye. Cockfighting is Pinoys' popular pastime among other gambling activities: casino, sweepstakes, jueteng, masiao, last two, suer-tres, horse race, jai alai, street games(hearty dos, mahjong, tong-its, sakla),spider wrestling.

Many years ago, the familiar rhythmical sounds that ranged from the utter silence to the measured shouting, then to the sudden yelling, coming periodically from the crowd in an old stadium used as a cockfighting arena around 50 meters from our house, were a good reminder for me at that time that it was a Sunday. Not in cockfighting, my parents were drawn in mahjong, not as gamblers, but as the host who owned mahjong sets, and invited friends in our neighborhood in playing the game at our house and earned extra income for our family through winners' commissions. As a kid, I was fond of the spider-wrestling game. I recall, we would go out at night, together with my friends, carrying flashlights, and would look for rare types of spiders in shrubs and trees. In finding spiders, the more terrible-looking the better – it meant for us that they're deadlier. We put them in matchboxes for safekeeping before the fights the next day.

Wikipedia spelled out the cultural impact of gambling as follows:

Gambling has contributed to the Philippines' culture and identity ever since its introduction and rise in popularity in the country. Similar to other East and Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines has developed a reputation as a gambling society. This culture of gambling permeates various sectors of the Philippine society, most primarily the rural males.

Amid the pandemic, this gambling culture was aggravated by the proliferation of the P657 Billion a year online sabong industry as disclosed by Jarius Bondoc in his column Gotcha excerpted below:

Online sabong is luring minors and addicting overseas workers. Gambling is brought right into homes and barracks. Families are wrecked, crimes are incited and society is corrupted.

During the campaign period up to the election, the psychology of choosing the winning combination from the list of candidates simulates the following psychological process phenomena that affect the gambling behavior:

BANDWAGON EFFECT

In 2010, a Pinoy chose a single ticket with the winning six numbers from a range of 1-55 and won the biggest jackpot of P741 Million. Hitting the headlines, such publicity would spark anyone off, even if he or she has never bought a ticket before, in "jumping on the bandwagon" and think of buying at least one ticket just in case. This phenomenon is the perfect companion to the bandwagon effect [per Cambridge University Press] caused by surveys: a situation where the information [survey results] about majority opinion [survey's top winners] causes some people [most Pinoys] to adopt [jumping on the bandwagon] for whatever reason [to be on the winning side].

UP Professor Randy David in his column Public Lives asserted the futility in grappling with the situation.

One can hardly blame political parties and coalition for preferring the merely "winnable" (as shown by surveys and past elections) over the truly qualified and worthy candidates ... I think most voters have long surrendered this critical function [of discernment] to the sensors [surveys] of public opinion.

PERSONAL CHOICE

Dr. Luke Clark, Director of the Center for Gambling Research at the University of British Columbia, said that "gambling games promote an 'illusion of control': the belief that the gambler can exert skill over an outcome." Just as a roulette player feels the thrill of a "high" when he throws himself the ball onto the roulette wheel, so too a voter who chooses personally and writes down himself the list of his or her "winning candidates."

NEAR MISSES

The adrenaline rush triggers excitement in playing more when a player's number combination gets closer to winning the jackpot. In like manner, a voter's "happy" hormone dopamine dashes when his or her list of "winning candidates" gets closer to the latest survey results deciphering the event as a sign of progress in projecting the outcome, and that a win of his or her combination is at hand.

The scope this gambling culture has permeated our society based on 2005 SWS survey result was as follows:

1) More than half of all adult Pinoys had engaged in some form of gambling.

2) 6.9 million had played Jueteng - the second most popular form of gambling.

The lump of "undecided" Pinoys that can sway the election results due to the dual effects of gambling propensity and choosing winners in the election: 1 in 3 voters. This proportion is based on SWS survey in September 2021 on "Self-reported freedom to speak against PRRD" that derived a 36% chunk that neither agree nor disagree on the the issue.

BACK TO THE QUESTION

Do you think the 19 million Pinoys that voted for Senator Bato believe he would be worthy of being addressed as President Bato?

No.

Why? The voter chose his name as merely one [like a number in a lotto ticket] among the winning-candidates combination. Senator Bato is just like a candidate that Professor David wrote as preferred by political parties for being "merely 'winnable' [riding on PRRD's popularity corroborated by non-response biased surveys] over the truly qualified and worthy candidates."

Let me conclude this article with a charming sketch by Janice Kennedy, an award-winning playwright:

Consider the Garden of Eden, when it was just Adam, Eve and the Man Upstairs.

"Come on," says Eve to her mate. "Have a bite. Chances are He'll never find out and the prize will be amazing."

So Adam bites, a willing participant in the world's first recorded act of gambling. Creation mythologies from cultures across the globe all involve tales of risk-taking and fate-tempting, which suggests one unassailable fact: The human urge to gamble is profound, universal, and primal.