Civil society under siege/The Filipino & football

This is alarming. Civil society is now under tremendous pressure to shut up, curl into a corner like a pooch, and throw its support behind the government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Leading the anti-libertarian posse is the Roman Catholic Church, helped and cheered along by Kompil, formerly a civic organization with impeccable EDSA credentials. Said Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP): Without a "realistic and more beneficial alternative" to GMA’s leadership, "why should we continue to raise petty issues about her personality, her political mistakes as if she were Superwoman? Does anyone see anything? A junta? A military takeover? Resignation of the president? Another EDSA? We have to concentrate on the essentials and not on petty things that create petty squabbles."

Said Prof. Chito Gaston, Kompil spokesman: "This is not the time to abandon the President. This is the time to link up and work, pursuing the political and social reforms that are badly needed in the country… Kompil has not withdrawn support for the government’s reform agenda… We will continue to constructively engage the government in order that solutions to the age-old problems of poverty can be worked out. We continue to have trust in the President. What is important is lines of communication are kept open."

Both the Church and Kompil clumsily miss the point.

Criticizing the President is not abandoning the President. It is an essential even indispensable function of the democratic system we have chosen to structure the institutions of the Philippines.

Both Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson defended the right of the press to be free, to lash out at the government and its leadership, even if the criticism should be harsh and excessive.

Better a government with a free press no matter how abusive than a government without one. In the case of civil society (the expression was not current at the time), these two great US presidents who grace Mount Rushmore pulled out all the stops so every American could speak out "in this great democracy of ours." Its Founding Fathers more than anything else "prized liberty and freedom of speech."

I submit the issue is somewhere else.

We Filipinos have arrived at that crucial point of nation-building where problems have so accumulated – garbage, graft and corruption, crime and violence, widespread poverty, population explosion – that we now pause, wonder and contemplate. Is the Western-US style of democracy good for us? Or is it hampering development, choking all of our systems and institutions, building up the façade of freedom while setting fire to duty and responsibility? This really is the issue. We see our neighbor countries in Asia leap to progress and prosperity in just a matter of decades. And they were not democratic at all. Unbridled freedom and criticism was a luxury they could not afford.

But so long as our republic draws nourishment from a constitution modeled after the US and the West, civil society must be allowed to speak out without let or hindrance. Civil society is about the only precious possession we have left. Its ranks embody the educated, the professionals, the studentry and the youth, men and women of arts and letters, the business community, idealistic priests and nuns, in short, the meritocracy. The dynamo of our society. Stifle this and you have a mangy, flea-bitten dog on a leash, its canine loyalty wagging a sorry tail at the mention of GMA.

The Church can behave like this if it wants. Kompil likewise. In fact, many in the latter’s ranks now occupy directorships in government boards. But they cannot have their cake and eat it too. I dislike pimps and pompous asses who once upon a time spat or vomited at the mention of Ronnie Puno’s name, or Jimmy Policarpio or Blas Ople. Now they salaam and see nothing wrong. And what if GMA should now smoke the peace pipe with the Marcoses and roll out the red carpet on the excuse the nation must unite and bygones should be bygones. Will the Church, will Kompil simply simper and say: Amen?

Whatever its flaws and shortcomings, civil society should be left alone. It’s the nation’s last effective bulwark against government abuse. Our political system has shattered on the shoals of corruption. I feel absolutely nothing but contempt when Sen. Edgar Angara speaks for the opposition and says the republic is in grave danger because of the president’s "inept leadership." Didn’t he once prodigally towel the sweat off Erap Estrada? And Senators John Osmeña and Tessie Oreta. The moment they talk, there is a heave in my innards and I rush to the lavabo. Ditto for Senator Pimentel. Ditto for Senator Biazon who once sought my arrest as he poured holy water on the head of Ronald Lumbao.

Silence civil society and what do you have left?

The communist revolutionary Left and the military right. A collapsed and bankrupt communist ideology has no longer anything to offer. The end of the Cold War saw to that. A military right, supported and bankrolled by fascist politicians and adventurers, represent the skull and bones of dead military regimes the world over that promised Valhalla but could only deliver chaos and anarchy. If these are the entities the GMA administration will allow to speak out once civil society is garroted, then heaven help this country.

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Why is the Philippines out of the football loop? When the World Cup took the international stage for three weeks, hundreds of millions the world over stopped the clock to watch as though the heavens had opened and manna was pouring out. We Filipinos merely scratched our head and wondered why everybody had gone bonkers over this sport and we had not. Basketball was and remains our national sport. By this time, the Philippines should be one of the world’s best in basketball. The irony of it all is that we long forfeited our ascendancy in Asian basketball. China, which did not play the game yet in the early 60s, now dominates – and we? We are far, far down in the cellar.

Our passion for basketball, I believe, goes a long, long way to explain and define Filipino culture.

We embrace sports where we can never excel because they enchant and fascinate us. Basketball is a tall man’s sport, but that is beside the point. The Filipino is drawn to the game because the pace is brisk. Unlike football or soccer, shots rain down the baskets with dizzying speed as ten players, five from opposing two teams, scramble up and down a medium-sized court. The razzle-dazzle, the sight of that ball often entering a hole in a matter of seconds or minutes is sheer entertainment for the Filipino. Basketball scores can reach 80 to 90, while football scores sometimes end scoreless or 1-0, or 1-all. For the Filipino, football is wasted energy, a climbing of a cliff, a boring marathon run.

What is overlooked – again a failure of Filipino culture – is the rhythmic flow of football, the defense and offensive patterns that rise and ebb like the tides of the sea. When Ronaldo and Rivaldo play football for Brazil, the game soars to the level of artistry. Bodies move, shift and swift like ballet dancers. The ball dribbles as though tied to their feet, each player on the field marvelously coiled into intricate offensive and defensive strategies. This is what Filipinos overlook, the creative nature of football as it glides and pirouettes and even curtsies – however overly long – to drill that ball in the nets. Maybe that’s why Filipinos in the main want to get rich quick. The hard and tough foreplay, which requires brains and guts and struggle, doesn’t make much sense. Maybe that’s why we remain poor because to progress needs struggle up a mountain and that ain’t fun.

And yet, when I was a young boy in shorts, soccer was a major college and university sports. The Spanish brought the game here and later on the British. La Salle and Ateneo were outstanding. Spanish-Filipino athletes still abounded and they took to football with a big big bang. Teams like Turba Salvaje were on the marquee. I played the game myself in a clumsy way of course, never mastering the kind of kick that could send the ball hurtling low like a line drive in baseball. Arsenio Lacson played football, perhaps in his own inimitable way, cursing, grunting, and expelling four-letter words as he wended his way merrily across the field.

Filipinos should shed their passion for basketball and play football.

Height and heft hardly matter. Look at the great Pele. Born Edson Aranetes Do Nascimiento, Pele, at times referred to as the Black Pearl of the Antilles, was the greatest football player that ever lived. He was just this high, this black Brazilian, with a body that looked very ordinary. But, by golly, when he was on the field, Pele was a human cutlass that slashed through every defense. He was swift and nimble, his legs probably culled from twin lightning bolts. Pele was presumably the first man to score a goal by turning his body upside down like an acrobat to kick a high ball into the nets. Pele was the first international athlete to gird the globe where he was known everywhere. Diego Maradona, who also claims to be the best, does not even come close.

Football would be the ideal sport for the Filipino. He is fast, dexterous, moves with fluidity and grace. The Filipino would also be ideal for gymnastics or diving or sprints where a repertoire of body motions are demanded, artistry, and acrobatic skill. The Filipino is a good and virtuoso dancer, a talent he should apply to sports. Certainly not to basketball where the towering hoopsters from other lands make him look like Quasimodo reaching for the moon. When will we ever learn?