Help from an Indon sports executive
From an article written by Snow Badua of Spin.ph, an Indonesian business tycoon is offering to assist in the preparation of Gilas Pilipinas for the Basketball World Cup in Spain next year.
Erick Thohir, president of the ASEAN Basketball League and owner of the Indonesia Warriors has offered to arrange exhibition matches for the Gilas with three NBA teams. This is very doable for him as he owns part of the Philadelphia 76ers. Likewise, Mr. Thohir is friends and is a business partner of Jason Levien, who recently acquired a controlling interest on the Memphis Grizzlies. He is also chummy with the owner of the Atlanta Hawks and is acquainted with other people on several NBA teams.
“We need to support the Philippines more to achieve better showing in the World Championships. We will use our connections in the NBA. We are happy for this feat. The pride of the Philippines is the pride of the ASEAN region,” he said.
Thohir further stated, “Being from ASEAN, we are so happy the Philippines qualified. I am opening some of the players in the NBA Summer League to give the team due training.”
If plans will see the light of day, Gilas Pilipinas will be doing tune-up matches with the Sixers, Grizzlies and Hawks. This we really have to see if only to gauge how our “little team” can match up to bigger, faster and stronger opponents.
In the same mold, Thohir is also open to helping the Philippine Azkals as he is part owner of DC United of Major League Soccer in the US. He is in the process also of acquiring a share of ownership with Inter Milan, a popular football club in the Italian Serie A. This guy is really big time. Ridiculously freaking big time.
With his benevolence, he likes to open opportunities for ASEAN athletes to shine in the international level thru his connections and is willing to help these athletes considering that the ASEAN region has about 600 million people and surely with this number, there would be an abundance of talent.
It took an Indonesian sports mogul to declare support for two of our national teams. Not counting Manny V. Pangilinan and Dan Palami, I still have to hear from some of the country’s mega-millionaires assisting our national sports programs. Or maybe they did already but prefer to be low profile. I hope so. We can’t expect all-out support from the PSC and the POC as these agencies had been developing controversies as far as I can remember, not athletes. And yes, they also have their share of pork being government controlled entities.
So they say Janet Lim Napoles owns 28 houses. Hello? She owns 30 to be exact. She owns the House of Representatives and the Senate. Did she not once declare that she owns the government? Then she goes missing. Maybe the authorities can try searching Lawis Ledge off the coast of Talisay City? She could be hiding inside the recently sunk ferry.
200M pesos for senators and 70M pesos for members of congress in crispy bacon funds annually. No wonder spouses and other familial ties elected to both houses are howling foul in the scrapping of the pork, as in Lani Mercado-Revilla. The biggest porker of all? P-Noy of course, having a trillion pesos at his disposal.
In his 2003 privilege speech for the scrapping of the PDAF, Sen. Ping Lacson has divided the bacon strips as follows: 2% as SOP to the Commission on Audit, 10% to the DPWH, 2% to the Baranggay Chairman, 14% to the contractor, 10% to the mayor or governor if they so demand and 20% to the legislator who identified/funded the project. Only 42% actually goes to the intended purpose. And you ask why we still have floods?
Crooks in suits and barongs have developed a hybrid and are now either called as swine-codiles and croco-pork. We live, deal and die with these miserable creations.