STL in Bacolod

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor CHERYL CRUZ Busines Editor NIDA A. BUENAFE Sports Editor RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

The Sangguniang Panlungsod has passed a resolution of no objection to the operation of Small Town Lottery. STL is allowed legally outside of Bacolod where local governments are taking a share of the income of this gambling operation.

The primary excuse of local executives is that they get incomes from the STL for the police and for the local government projects. They do not get any from illegal gambling and that the money from legalized gambling contributes to social services and security.

There are other forms of gambling sanctioned by the government. The excuse is the same – these operations give money to the government.

Money is the primordial justification for these games of chance. They are a way of government collecting money from those who have hopes and dreams of getting rich quick. For the thousands of bet collectors, gambling is a livelihood for lack of jobs and other legal sources of income that government should have created but did not due to corruption.

It is the duty of the State to teach its citizens to earn from honest work. Schools drive into the minds of the young people the right values as work and to take the moral path as President Aquino preaches. No school ever teaches its wards of the ways of gambling and how to make money out of it. This restraint acknowledges the ancient wisdom that gambling is immoral and socially wrong.

Gambling is known to be corruptive. This is the reason that families also do not teach their children to engage in gambling, and rather to attain a level of education for productive labor.

The propagation of gambling by government is a contradiction to its noble purpose of creating a productive citizenry.

The excuse of Bacolod that other towns and cities have also legalized gambling is distorted thinking. If one town allows prostitutes in its streets, does that justify the rest to adopt the same? This imitative form of thinking is the reason evil spreads because morality is set aside in favor of money. That others are doing it does not make immorality anything but immoral regardless of good motive.

It is the duty of decent people to continue resisting immorality in whatever guise or excuse.*