POGO blood money

As many people wonder what President Bongbong Marcos will be sharing in his third State of the Nation Address (SONA), it is interesting to note that different individuals and groups have started to openly express their discoveries or their “critical views” publicly. As I reviewed what has been put out, it is clear that “the natives are restless” – and unhappy.

A number of articles have been published about how PhilHealth and the DOH will see or have seen a huge part of their funds siphoned off and parked into the Maharlika Fund. A number of columnists in broadsheets and KOLs or key opinion leaders in social media have made more efforts to attract public attention to the administration’s mismanagement of funds, loans, etc.

The week after those articles came out, I received a two-page letter calling on all Filipinos and community leaders to write to the President and call for the end of all POGO operations in the Philippines and to order PAGCOR to cancel all licenses.

I investigated the source of the anti-POGO campaign: 1Sambayan, and a friend described it as a generic campaign and shared sentiment of different groups with different affiliations but all of them fed up with the not so merry-go-round POGO investigations amounting to nothing.

The group pushing for the stop to POGO apparently understands media campaigns as they even included a suggested draft that people could copy or simply sign and forward to the Office of the President:

An open letter to President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.

Dear President Marcos Jr.:

We respectfully recommend that the President direct the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) to cancel immediately the licenses to operate of all Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs) that cater to the Chinese mainland market on the following grounds:

1. The Chinese embassy in Manila has declared that under Chinese law, “any form of gambling, including online gambling and overseas gambling by Chinese citizens, is illegal.” The Chinese embassy even appealed to the Philippine government to ban all POGOs that cater to the Chinese market. This is now public knowledge in the Philippines and all over the world. (Statement of the