Richie should rally officials for a boycott

THERE are weak decisions, strong decisions.

The decision not to go to Myanmar for the SEA Games on December 1-11 this year wasn’t that weak, but it wasn’t that strong, either.

“I am not going to Myanmar to protest their action of scrapping events where we could possibly win medals,” said Richie Garcia, the chairman of the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC). “I also enjoin my other fellow sports officials to follow suit.”

There are close to 10 disciplines that we are traditionally strong that Myanmar officials had removed from the SEA Game calendar.

While that is brazenly unfair, there is really nothing new there.

The SEA Games are notoriously known to be almost the exclusive domain of the host country.

Which disciplines the hosts would choose to stage, that decision is virtually uncontestable. Such officials deliberately ignore the highest tenets of sportsmanship.

They are virtual dictators, whose word is the law, no matter how crooked it may be.

Thus, all a member-country has to do is simply wait for its turn to host the Games so that it could pick the events to make them a potential champion.

I’ve said it here a thousand and one times already: Everybody in the SEA Games is a fool making fun of his/her own self once in two years.

The SEA Games have never been the showcase for excellence but rather, the venue to display one’s hypocrisy.

This has been going on since the birth of the SEA Games in 1977 from the old Peninsular Games.

Richie Garcia is angry and I like that.

Sometimes, when you are angry, you make deci- sions that are true and straight.

But then, while Richie’s action is good, it isn’t good enough.

While it is a show of protest, it doesn’t have the sting that can really hurt its intended target.

So, better yet if Richie would rally his fellow officials in the region to abandon the Myanmar mayhem.

It’d yet be the strongest move as it could jolt everybody to act in unison to finally put an end to this charade.

Richie can begin by writing his fellow officials to call for a boycott.

Anything lesser than that is like firing blanks.