Dear Filipino athletes
Make no mistake about it: We Filipinos support you, our national athletes. We would always cheer for you and extol your achievements. We may not know (or love) all the sports, but rest assured that we are always behind you in your efforts, especially whenever you wear the flag and name of the country in international competitions.
Parents everywhere view sports positively, because it instills discipline and excellence in their children, and develops their mind and body. It remains a badge of honor for many families to have varsity players among their children. It remains a badge of honor for communities to have great athletes, young and old, as neighbors, friends, classmates, officemates or fellow members of the tribe.
If parents nationwide would have their way, our country would have a grassroots-based, bottoms-up sports development program that would encourage the youth to take part in the widest possible array of sports. Young people themselves have this innate interest and love for sports.
We are certain you all share that vision of such a sports-loving country, with a solid program per sport. We know you want that too, because how else are we going to create a new generation of “faster, higher, stronger” athletes than by systematically tapping and developing the best of the widest and broadest grassroots in our mostlyyouthful country.
We know that you, our athletes, know more about this than the ordinary citizen. And so we look up to you and your supposed national sports associations. But what we hear are mainly the voices of traditional politicians and Big Businesses. These malignant forces and their anti-sports mindsets of corruption and commercialization have infected many national sports associations.
We hear of many stories of athletes denied state support for the most corrupt reasons. And if they disobey the traditional politicians who control the public purse intended for sports, the athletes would be told that their last option is to sell themselves to Big Business.
We believe that, left on your own, you our people’s athletes could run your own national sports associations in a professional and patriotic manner. Perhaps when you reach a critical mass of athletes in your different sports, you could demand and win radical changes in your national sports associations, boot out the corrupt and peddlers of selling out, and install merit, sportsmanship, professionalism and patriotism as the highest standards in your associations.
The election of athletes and socalled athlete’s parties have not resulted in the re-allocation or redistribution of political power in favor of athletes. The athletesturned-politicians have reduced our and your legitimate demands to cheap electoral slogans. In place of priority state support for sports in which we join you in fighting for, the state offers the cheap substitutes — or more of the same: commercialization by way of charity, and corruption by way of patronage. They have become part of the problem.
This critical situation in Philippine sports — the yawning gap between people’s athletes and the state supposedly supportive of them — is reflected in the preparations for the 30th Southeast Asian Games. We do not see here the professionalism and patriotism of the athletes. Your voices have been drowned out and substituted by the dominant shrill diktats of traditional politicians and Big Business.
It is simply impossible that Filipino athletes would approve of the construction of a new stadium right smack in the ancestral domain of the Aetas. Neither would you allow the signing of an unfair and onerous contract for the construction of the stadium by a foreign entity which would get money from a Philippine bank.
It is simply impossible that Filipino athletes would not know how to welcome, accommodate, feed, transport and secure fellow athletes from other countries. Neither would you designate a seeming warehouse as a media center.
It is simply impossible that Filipino athletes would allow the selection of corrupt, hyperpartisan and inept officials as chair or leaders of such an international sporting event. Neither would you allow sports to be used as a political wedge to further divided our people.
As the Games open today, we your fellow Filipinos reaffirm our support for you, our national athletes. We stand ready to embrace the defeated, and to carry the victors high on our shoulders. You have seen us cheer and shout for Gilas and the Azkals. You have seen nothing yet.
May the medals you win for flag and country shine brightly and light up our unity moving forward.
But know too that we also reaffirm to support your causes: greater state support for sports, a national sports development program, the booting out of the corrupt and the agents of commercialism, and the attainment of a truly professional and patriotic Philippine sports.
When the Games wind down, we would join you in demanding full accountability for every single peso in taxpayer money disbursed in the name of Filipino athletes and Philippine sports. We would join you in demanding the indemnification and compensation of Aetas displaced by the corrupt stadium construction, and the reexamination of the contract with the foreign entity in charge of the construction. Each and every peso of the billions misspent, corrupted, plundered and also deprived of you. The list of controversies and scandals is long. We will scour through this list, and new ones that we would all discover.
We would also cheer you on as you form athletes’ unions and reorganize your national sports associations, because in changemaking, nothing beats team effort.
Make no mistake: The national uproar over the SEA Games should give you pause, not because we are against you but it shows who are truly one with you and your causes. We win as one nation whenever we unite against corruption, commercialism and ineptitude inside and outside of sports.