Melquiades Robles, long associated with El Shaddai leader Mike Velarde, has been a fixture in several administrations, lobbying his way into leading the light rail transit (LRT) system and having a lock into a big number of projects in the transport sector.
His underlings have also snatched choice positions in the bureaucracy, including one overrated personality who has the habit of abandoning his bosses when the going gets tough. In no time, his curriculum vitae got longer, touted as a crisis manager whose expertise is to good media exposure, like other syndicates whose members ended up as lawmakers.
Yet, Robles’s reputation preceded him, and his enemies brand him as a liability wherever he goes, and as he snuggles his way into the good graces of any administration. Many were actually surprised why President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. appointed him general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), a goldmine for grafters and bureaucrat capitalists. It has been said that hundreds of politicians enriched themselves by suckling the PCSO’s teat.
From the middle of 2023, Robles clashed with Small Town Lottery (STL) operators, scrapped the license of one in Cagayan de Oro City and immediately accepted and approved the license of another firm to take over STL operations. The timely intervention of the Supreme Court (SC) stopped Robles from running the STL operations in that profitable area in Mindanao. At the PCSO itself, an executive in its IT department, May Cerelles, told a Senate panel that it is possible for the lotto draw results to be manipulated by those who have access to the root server. Only PCSO general manager Melquiades Robles and assistant general manager Arnel Casas have access to that root server.
Last year, the PCSO was flooded with complaints about thousands of rundown lotto machines, thin pink playslips that fade before one year after another supplier took over from the APO Production Unit, a government entity that produced a thicker and more durable form. In his testimony, Robles said that he would be most comfortable if there were only a manageable number of outlets, say 11,000. That, in a nutshell, is the reason why since late 2023, STL and lotto outlets have been losing money as Robles, on his own, cut a deal with Pacific Online Systems Corp. (POSC) chief Willy Ocier to operate e-lotto for one year on an experimental basis. By crippling STL betting and allowing lotto machines to break down without being replaced by PCSO, Robles is, indeed, pushing e-lotto by POSC to be the prime betting product.
In December 2023, the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel (OGCC) flagged the Robles deal with POSC, saying his memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the private company does not comply with the law and explained that its terms were disadvantageous to the government. Robles then ran to the Palace to seek succor by saying Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin agreed that the PCSO has authority to approve the POSC deal since it has the capability to approve and assess the technical requirements for betting platforms. A congressman belied the Robles claim, saying his MOA with POSC “clearly falls within the purview of 2023 Revised Guidelines and Procedures for Entering into Joint Venture Agreements between Government and Private Entities.”
Robles pleaded innocence, claiming he did not seek an approval from OP for the POSC deal since e-lotto, a system in which bettors can participate in the daily lotto draws online, was just on a trial phase. OGCC dismissed the inadequate Robles boilerplate argument by saying it is still a government deal with a private entity that must pass legal requirements. Then came the filing of a graft and plunder complaint before the Office of the Ombudsman by Filipinos for Peace, Justice, and Progress Movement (FPJPM) through its vice president Richard Rillo.
FPJPM asserted that Robles and the PCSO board violated the law when they authorized the illegal payment of a 14% weekly commission from the proceeds of e-lotto betting to POSC and disregarded the 2023 opinion of the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel (OGCC) that stressed “POSC should not receive any commission” from the sale and marketing of online game tickets during the experimental run. So, Robles is ranged against PCSO staffers, STL operators (some of whom have not remitted PCSO’s P5-billion share from 2016 to 2020), congressmen and senators who want him to come clean, as well as the betting public. Before Robles commits more lawless acts, Marcos Jr. must kick him out. “Dura lex, sed lex.”
