THE PRESIDENTIAL system of government, which gives the President vast powers, is one that is easily abused by a reckless head of state. Many Filipinos may now view Estrada as a disaster, but his transgressions went by largely unnoticed until October because the system of accountabilities failed and the institutions designed to check on the excesses of a powerful executive—such as Congress and opposition political parties—were in the President's thrall.

Had Singson not told his tale, Estrada would likely have got away with receiving, the governor alleged, P32 to 35 million a month in jueteng collections. The story, as it is told, is straight out of a Mario Puzo novel. In August 1998, barely two months after he had assumed the presidency, Estrada called Singson, Bong Pineda and his friend Charlie 'Atong' Ang, to a meeting at his Greenhills home. There, said Singson, Pineda was instructed to deliver the President's share of jueteng protection money to Ang, who had promised Estrada that he could strong-arm the gambling operators to deliver. Two months later, Ang and Estrada had a falling out, and Singson was asked to take over as collector of jueteng payoffs. A ledger of the collections of, and disbursements from, the bribe money was kept by Yolanda Ricaforte, whose husband is tourism undersecretary and a presidential pal.

The ledger, which Singson submitted to the Senate, shows collections from 22 Luzon provinces, Iloilo province, Metro Manila and Olongapo City. By the governor's estimate, the total jueteng take is about P50 million a day, with the President taking a three-percent share of total collections. Singson said he collected the money and delivered it to Estrada either at the President's home or at Malacañang Palace.

This scheme shows an intimate knowledge of the dynamics of jueteng and the layers of protection that it engenders. If Singson is to be believed, this is the first time ever that a President so systematically collected jueteng take. It was his task, Singson said, to make sure the likes of Pineda, who controlled jueteng in Pangasinan, Pampanga, Cavite and Bataan, delivered the President's cut. For Quezon, the operator was Charing Magbuhos and in Batangas, Arman Sanchez—Singson said he collected from them, too.

In Bicol, Antonio G. Dy Prieto, the presidential assistant for the region, took charge of turning over the collections to Singson. In Bulacan, said the governor, the jueteng collector was Estrada's own son, San Juan Mayor Jose 'Jinggoy' Ejercito, who is pals with Viceo, the mayor who supposedly controls jueteng in the province. There were smaller, decentralized jueteng operations in Metro Manila and guerrilla operations in Laguna and elsewhere, but as the ledger shows, collections were sometimes made from these places too, in amounts ranging from P150,000 to P250,000 every 15 days, compared to the P1 to P1.5 million that was turned over by provinces where jueteng operations were more established and regular.

The list of jueteng operators that Singson drew up jibes with information obtained in congressional hearings held in 1995 and June 2000 as well as with police intelligence reports. His estimate of jueteng collections—P50 million a day or P18 billion a year- was also the estimate Golez made in a House hearing in 1995. Golez's estimate then of how much of this amount goes to intelihensiya paid to police, military and civilian officials ranges from P2.5 billion to P6 billion, or anywhere from 14 to 30 percent of total collections.

Singson claims no other President has so systematically profited from illegal gambling as Estrada has. Marcos, he said, did not bother: The collections from jueteng were too paltry in comparison to the vast amounts that could be made elsewhere, such as cuts from foreign loans or commissions from big government contracts. But then Marcos had grander ambitions, and although he, too, had small-town roots, he was not quite as immersed in small-town politics as Estrada was.

TO ERAP, the presidency is the mayoralty writ large. The mayor usually has the police by the balls. Similarly, Estrada treats the PNP as if it were the protection arm of Malacañang. Thus, when Atong Ang, with the President's blessings and with the endorsement of the Philippine Gaming Corporation (Pagcor), introduced the "Bingo-2 Ball" as a "legal" substitute for jueteng, the PNP obliged by raiding recalcitrant jueteng operators.

In many small towns, it is not unusual for the police to act as the mayor's goons, protecting illegal activities from which the local chief executive takes a cut as well as putting the squeeze on rival syndicates. In part this is because the local chief of police, who is chosen by the mayor, owes a debt of gratitude to the official who nominated him. In addition, the police take for themselves a chunk of the intelihensiya pie. Similarly, whoever becomes the PNP chief owes the President his appointment and is careful to curry favor with the appointing power.

The President also names the boards of government corporations, including Pagcor, whose board is so stocked with Erap appointees that it has more members than what its charter allows. Moreover, the President wields influence over the boards he appointed, so he can also have some say on how government corporations run their affairs. Thus, in Pagcor, the board merely looked away when Estrada put his friend Ang in charge of jai-alai and Bingo 2-Ball operations.

What Ang did was to assign Bingo 2-Ball franchises to some of the existing jueteng operators in different provinces and to award his firm a hefty 27 percent share of total collections from the gambling operations. Singson claims that Ang was fronting for Estrada in the firm and that Bingo 2-Ball was a scheme for the President and his cohorts to grab for themselves a bigger share of gambling profits.

Whatever the case, Ang began Bingo 2-Ball without the benefit of a law—gambling franchises are awarded by Congress. He did not even have a contract as a Pagcor "consultant" nor were the franchises bidded out. He was able to run roughshod over established procedures simply because he had the President's backing.

By October, several Bingo 2-Ball franchises had been awarded mainly to favored jueteng operators. In effect, Ang had legalized jueteng without waiting for Congress to enact legislation on the matter; he had also effected a scheme to siphon off to his company the share of the pie that once went to intelihensiya. (In fact, the PNP was already negotiating with Pagcor for the police to "legally" have a cut from these funds to make up for the intelihensiya that police officers would have to forego once jueteng was legalized. The logic was that if the money came from the PNP itself, police officers need not feel they were beholden to gambling operators.)

While Ang was working on Bingo 2-Ball, Chavit Singson was feeling the pinch. In June, police raided gambling dens in Ilocos Sur and found a "blue book" that detailed jueteng payoffs in 34 towns in the province. Police officials said that among those supposedly listed in the blue book, although in coded form, were the names of mayors and police officers who were Singson supporters. PNP Chief Panfilo Lacson went so far as to write House Speaker Manuel Villar and Interior Secretary Alfredo Lim to say that the Ilocos Sur governor was protecting jueteng operations in Northern Luzon.

Interestingly enough, the same blue book produced by the police supposedly also contained the name of Rep. Grace Singson, wife of the governor's jueteng and political rival, Eric. Yet despite this, the Bingo 2-Ball franchise was given to Eric Singson, himself a former congressman. The move, in effect, cut Chavit Singson off from potentially lucrative gambling profits. Police also raided the properties of suspected smugglers - some of them supporters of the governor - whom they accused of coddling the profitable trade in contraband appliances and motorcycles in Northern Luzon. In typical gangland fashion, Chavit Singson, feeling hemmed in, hit back: with the most damning exposé ever made of a sitting President.

Death by exposé: There lies the danger of treating the presidency as a protection racket. Singson dealt Estrada a near-fatal blow and exposed the President's links to the illicit world of gambling and crime. The network of complicity unraveled.