SEA Games’ success and a reluctant hero
SuccESS, as George Bernard Shaw claims, can cover many blunders. The success of our athletes at the just concluded 30th Southeast Asian Games may even help cover the way organizers initially goofed up their jobs. We have shown the world how gracious we are as hosts. The vice president of Olympic council of Asia, Wei Jizhong, after seeing how the 30th SEA Games was staged, said he believes the Philippines can host bigger sporting events. Expressing his admiration for President Duterte, Wei said it was only in the Philippines where he saw for the first time the chief executive of a country apologize for the mistakes and mishaps experienced by foreign delegates.
Unfortunately, social media did a good job documenting and overplaying how several teams experienced mishaps from the airport to their hotel, and that even the food initially didn’t meet the athletes’ standards. House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano, head of the organizing committee, promptly apologized for the mistakes that happened mostly before the SEA Games officially opened. Still, fake news and partisan posts online tried to blacken and derail the successful staging of the Games.
Overall, we did an outstanding job hosting the event. As we congratulate our athletes for their wonderful performance, we must give special accolade to a reluctant hero who soared like an eagle during the games. A day before Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr. was set to deliver a speech at the Embassy of Indonesia in celebration of the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Philippines and Indonesia, surfer Roger Casugay went viral on social media for saving his Indonesian competitor Arip Nurhidayat, whose surfing leash snapped during one of the heats in the men’s longboarding event in San Juan, La Union. Casugay rescued the Indonesian surfer unmindful of the ongoing race for gold medal.
This heroic act prompted the Games organizers to name Casugay as the Philippine flag-bearer in the closing ceremony of the regional biennial meet. Philippine Deputy Chef de Mission Stephen Fernandez said: “He went above the medal, and it’s a show of his character. He deserves to be the flag-bearer.” Casugay later on won the gold medal in the men’s longboarding event after defeating his teammate Jay-R Esquievel on December 8.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo commended Casugay for personifying sportsmanship in the 30th SEA Games. “Winning the competition and upholding sportsmanship is important, but humanity is above all. My appreciation for Roger Casugay, a Filipino surfer who lost the chance to gain gold to save an Indonesian athlete from falling during the competition,” Widodo said on his official Twitter account.
As the 25-year-old Casugay was being heralded as the event’s hero for an unselfish act during a semifinal surfing competition, he publicly refused to be called a hero. “As a surfer, we have a brotherhood. No matter what happens, if someone needs my help, I will be there. If you have something to give, you have to give it,” Casugay said.
What Casugay did was a demonstration of the Filipino value of malasakit, which we give even to a stranger or those who can’t return the favor. We show
malasakit even to those who do not ask for our help because we care. As netizens continue to praise Casugay’s act of heroism and how he showed the true Filipino spirit of malasakit, other social-media posts observed the absence of
malasakit among our leaders. One post read: “Imagine what we can accomplish as a nation and as a race if only half of the Filipinos who are on the higher levels would reach back and pull someone up from the lower levels, rather than stepping on them.”
Here’s the clincher: Imagine where the Philippines should be by now were it not for the inaction of our leaders who had all the chance to uplift the life of their poor constituents. These leaders have the power to make Filipinos happy…by leaving the country permanently!