2019 SEA Games: How not to walk the talk

ROME and the Colosseum, for that matter, were not built in a day. Asian (SEA) Games that will be hosted by the Philippines in November could not be constructed at the speed and pace that organizers had aimed for when the region’s premier, 10-nation athletic competition was awarded to the country.

The bad news is that the original budget of P7.5 billion for this year’s edition of the SEA Games has been slashed by P2 billion, leaving the Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organizing Committee (PHISGOC) a big problem that it would have to solve soonest with the competition just a little over nine months away.

Worse, the budget cut came in an election

the PHISGOC would

likely approach to

arguably would have more important priorities-political ones for sure--than investing goodwill in a sports spectacle that would last only two weeks and would be forgotten until the next edition comes along in 2021.

The mid-term polls on May 13 will see Alan Peter Cayetano, former senator and former Foreign Affairs secretary, running for a congressional seat in Taguig City, Metro Manila.

Now also the chairman of the PHISGOC, he should not be prevented from also giving his precious time to his bid for a seat in the House of Representatives, should he?

Raising P2 billion is not an enviable task and, arguably, failure on the part of Cayetano

candidacy for better or for worse.

Apparently, only Malacanang can save the day for the organizers, despite President Rodrigo Duterte having ordered them to leave nothing to chance in hosting the sports extravaganza, hinting that they were on their own where infrastructure and logistics were concerned.

The President did not even say that the Philippines should win the SEA Games “overall” championship, because that would have been presumptuous.

That absurdity has become more palpable with reports that Filipino athletes who are set to compete in the biennial event have not trained as hard as they should owing to lack of training facilities.

- claiming to an incredulous world that the Philippine would sweep this and that event, further burdening the Pinoy high jumper or Pinay swimmer with undue pressure to perform extremely well before Filipino sports fans.

SEA Games want to make a good accounting of themselves, if only to show the world their and our boundless hospitality.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions but heaven knows who are trying to overcome the odds, not the least the billions needed to stage the greatest sports show on earth in Southeast Asia in November.