Peping’s accusing finger points at him

POC chairman Peping Cojuangco showed great concern for the national team by asking a rhetorical question, “Do you want a sports leader who can throw a game away just for money? How would the athletes feel if they have that kind of a leader?”

I don’t know how the athletes would feel if they’d have a game-fixer as a leader, but I know how some of the athletes feel now they have someone like El Presidente in the PSC; they are more than happy to have someone who has their back.

Isn’t that why there are so many issues being raised against NSAs? Because athletes feel they won’t be left out to dry now that PSC chair Butch Ramirez and his enforcer El Presidente have shown they are after the athletes’ welfare, and not that of the officials? Disparity in allowance, dispute with officials and a training venue rented out to a private corporation, these are just some of the concerns the athletes have raised in the few months that Ramirez and Fernandez have been on the helm.

So I don’t know how athletes would feel having a game-fixer as a leader, but with Fernandez and Ramirez? They feel great and have confidence in their leadership.

Now, as to the over-staying POC chairman who broke a 2012 promise not to run in 2016, I know how the athletes feel being used as pawns in his personal war. And they don’t like it.

Peping showed he had a long memory by digging up issues in the 70s, then I guess he doesn’t have to dig deep to know how the hard-working national athletes felt slighted as recently as the 2013 Southeast Asian Games when the volleyball and football national teams weren’t allowed to join the SEA Games because Peping et. al. wanted to send a personal message to Myanmar?

How did the 60-members of the men’s and women’s football teams and the men’s and women’s futsal teams feel after months of training and preparation only to be denied entry to the SEA Games? How did the officials feel after spending for the training, arranging friendlies and all only to be told, “Sorry, you’re not going?” Slighted would be putting it mildly. Now, let’s go further back in time to 2009, the era of Teams Philippines in the SEA Games, when both the POC and PSC had their own sets of Philippine teams. Did Peping ask how the athletes feel when 12 of the 13-man cycling team in that SEA Games were disqualified? And how that lone cyclist who passed was pressured to not compete in solidarity kuno? Did he ask the athletes how they feel?

I think the fact that the lone athlete hasn’t returned to the national team is a testatement of her feelings.

It’s great that Peping has raised the athletes’ feelings vis-a-vis the leadership. We really don’t know how the athletes would feel if they have a game-fixer in charge, but we do know how they feel with Mon and Butch in charge.

We also know how they feel with Peping in charge and they all (at least those I’ve talked with) say one thing: Pulihi na na’g batan-un.