OLYMPIC GOLD DREAM; ON CHINA, LET’S PLAY FAIR

THE gung-ho talk we hear that Tokyo 2020 may mean our first Olympic gold notwithstanding, my thesis is that we are chasing our third. The first two, diver Victoria Manalo Draves, daughter of chefmusikero Teofilo of Orani, Bataan, got in the 1948 London Olympics. But, given the rampant racism at the time, she, based in San Francisco, won the same for the United States. She never forgot her roots though and was active in helping Pinoy immigrants in California. In San Francisco, there is a 2-acre downtown park named after her, which I visited in 2013.

How can one beat a Victoria na, Manalo pa? Her mother was Gertrude Taylor, an English maid who must have been thrilled that her daughter won in her native England. At that time, no Pinoy could marry a white American under laws barring interracial marriages, which the US Supreme Court finally struck down in 1967 ( Loving

v.Virginia, 388 US 1).

Vicki was invited by the Jaycees after her rousing London twin triumph and was billeted in Malacañang no less by President Elpidio Quirino. She visited her roots in Orani, Bataan, which she repeated in a final sentimental journey home in the last decade. She passed on in 2010, a paradigm for the next Pinoy/Pinay to win our third Olympic gold. She is enshrined in the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

There may be some uneasiness here as to whether she won as a Filipino in London. Blood tells, is my short and simple answer. At a time when foreign cagers are naturalized overnight, foreign athletes with Pinoy blood are welcome and foreign coaches/ consultants are all over the place.

We grieve over Kobe Bryant, let’s cheer for Vicki, the first woman diver of Asian descent to win an Olympic gold (two even).

Ernest John Obiena, our pole vaulter who dreams of a Tokyo gold, has a coach from Ukraine (Vitaly Petrov). Two pole vault competitions in China, this month and the next, have been canceled because of the coronavirus malady there. The Tokyo Olympiad? Oh, nonononono!

The debate meantime also continues on the arbitral ruling in a process that President Benigno “Pnoy” Aquino 3rd had initiated and won against China. The long ruling I have had no time to read in the original. To be sure, China has. I am just wondering why it pointedly rejects the ruling. Malamang talo(?) — not only in a barbershop is one logical reading. A petty schoolyard win? I’ll take it anyway. It may be a forward step in a journey of a thousand miles.

I listened to Justice Tony Carpio late last month and I became more of a true believer that we did have a winning case, bolstered by his tireless continuing further research.

I have worked on another matter with our arbitration lawyer, Paul Reichler, a Harvard Law cum laude alum. We trained at different times in the firm of Arnold & Porter in Washington D.C. (We were 70 in 1969-70 and I worked out of a historic townhouse where Lafayette once lived, within walking distance from we lived. I understand the firm has moved downtown, and now has a thousand lawyers all over the world. In my time, I knew it had a strong pro

bono commitment. In my stay in the US, I was struck by the fact that black, Catholic and Jewish lawyers seemed to care most for fellow minorities and underdogs.)

In 1986, Paul defeated the US for Nicaragua in the World Court (the International Court of Justice or ICJ). America would not comply with the adverse ICJ ruling though. The United Nations could not do anything. Bullies from the schoolyard and in the world stage apparently are the same; they live by their own Basta! code.

We may not be in a position to fight anyone, but we should be ready to defend ourselves from any irridentist aggressor or landgrabber. The Viets defended themselves from France, America and China. Indonesia blows up foreign vessels poaching in its waters, China not excepted. The arguable defeatist wala-naman-tayongmagagawa stance of the administration makes me feel forlorn.

We may compete in having had the longest record in slavery, under Spain, the US, Japan, the US again, the Ilocanos of Marcos and the Davaoeños of Duterte. The Marcoses ruined our values, institutions and processes as well as the natural evolution of leaders who were cut down in

the flower of their youth; the deterioration we kind of arrested in 1986-1987, and was arguably revived vigorously in 2016. In 1986, we said non sibi sed

patriae. Not self, but country, and sang Bayan Ko with fervor.

Now the Chinese invasion is coming in another form, willynilly. Its own domestic fatal victims are now in the hundreds, and counting. It is not China’s fault, of course. Indeed, why shoot oneself in the foot? Who needs the deadly virus? Xenophobia or sinophobia in the 2019 novel coronavirus or 2019-nCoV context is just unacceptable.

I am with the Prez here, as I was in his success in bringing home the Bells of Balangiga, to conclude a campaign that my fellow maubanin, Fr. Horacio de la Costa, helped start.

Now, let’s go get that third Olympic gold in Tokyo in August. Let us hope and pray the current virus scare won’t result in canceling the coming Olympiad, leading unjustifiably to intensified sinophobia.

*** Goodbye and thank you, Sir Gaby Tabuñar, a consummate journalist, a pro, who was so helpful to me when I was candidate Cory Aquino’s amateurish spokesman in the 1985- 1986 snap polls. The courtly patriot just wrote 30, at 94.