PRESIDENT Duterte has heeded the call of senators for Malacanang to suspend the operations of electronic cockfight gambling, or “e-sabong,” the Senate leadership was informed by the head of the Public Order and Dangerous Drugs committee.Fielding questions in a townhall event in Quezon province, Senate President Vicente Sotto III said that administration Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa informed him that Duterte agreed to temporarily suspend the license of e-sabong operators.Sotto was in Quezon barnstorming with Partido Reporma standard bearer Panfilo Lacson. According to Sotto, de La Rosa, who chairs the investigating panel, told him that Duterte himself conveyed by phone on Sunday his decision to suspend the license of e-sabong operators.Dela Rosa had earlier declined to reply when asked for confirmation last weekend, as the Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs was circulating the Resolution for senators’ signature, endorsing the call to suspend the operation of e-sabong until—in the words of Sotto who introduced the motion at Thursday’s hearing—a “satisfactory” resolution is seen to the apparent abductions of 31 individuals.Asked by Dela Rosa how Pagcor will take the Senate resolution to halt licenses of operators, Diane Erica Jogno, Vice President of Pagcor’s E-Sabong Licensing Department, replied at the hearing that the agency will not object to their call, but that Pagcor will have to seek the approval of the Office of the President.At the Senate hearing, it was agreed that senators sign the resolution that Dela Rosa promised to take up with Duterte, whom the state gaming agency Pagcor said had the power to order the temporary suspension of licenses.Sotto confirmed that “according to Pagcor, it has to be the President who will suspend the licenses.”The disappearance of dozens of people – game fowl farm workers, cockfight aficionados, e-sabong workers – came amid reports of an increasing number of bettors being mired in debt, including some policemen who were linked to “holdups” in Laguna and Batangas.Apart from that, some senators are also questioning the issuance by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Agency of licenses to seven operators of e-sabong that was said to be beyond Pagcor’s mandate, as these outfits did not have congressional franchises. Image credits:
