Where’s sports agenda?

The past two weeks, we’ve all had our fill of political news: who’s running for what, and who isn’t running with whom. It gets kind of amusing to see how hard some presidential candidates are working just to find someone who will agree to be their running mate. It’s even more entertaining that promises are so nebulous, we don’t really know what all these headline-hungry candidates are saying, except that they’re running and that they proclaim to be better than anybody else. The only thing that’s new is that they’re doing it all earlier than usual, like supermarkets that started playing Christmas jingles in August.

One item that is always lost in discussions of future plans is the sports agenda. To be blunt, there is generally such a scramble for appropriated funds that sports is considered a luxury in this country, and not a basic human right. Granted, many local executives and congressmen build basketball courts, but these are all “multipurpose” courts, used not only for hoops, volleyball, tennis and badminton, but also for evacuations during calamities, singing contests, street markets, movies screenings, beauty pageants, birthday parties, and other community social gatherings, including celebration of mass. We can’t really say they are exclusively for sports use when everyone does pretty much what they can in them. And every so often, you’ll see multi-colored lights and mirror balls accompanied by pounding music on weekends or special occasions.

Sports flourished the most during the Marcos administration, the early year of the Cory Aquino government, the Ramos presidency, and towards the end of the Arroyo leadership. Marcos had Project: Gintong Alay, run excellently by Michael Keon, and that was considered the foundation for a golden age of Philippine athletics in particular. That era saw the Thrilla in Manila, and the discovery of Lydia de Vega, Isidro del Prado, Paeng Nepomuceno, and other all-time greats of Philippine sports. The early years of the Aquino administration ushered in the birth of the Philippine Sports Commission, and the organization of world-level events like the Chess Olympiad and the 1991 Southeast Asian Games. Pres. Ramos attended the first Philippine Sports Summit in Baguio (where this writer was head of the NCR delegation). An athlete himself, he was very interested in long-term development, and even personally led a national fitness day which, for some reason, was never continued. The Arroyo administration saw full support for the 2005 SEA Games in Manila, with the Philippines showing ASEAN just what it is capable of. Ironically, we have not really built on those foundations, the political appointees of the winners of every election seem oblivious to history, and try to remake it as they go along.

This writer, for one, would like to see a debate among presidential candidates on what their plan to do for sports. More progressive countries have seen sports as a means of boosting health, productivity and morale among the citizenry. While we gladly proclaim how crime stops whenever Manny Pacquiao fights even as there are riots in major US cities when a favorite sports team wins a championship, that isn’t the point. Those temporary palliatives notwithstanding, where do we stand when it comes to sports development?

As has been written in this column before, we are the only country in the world where sports straddles the public and private sectors. Individual sports are run by private entities, but the funding, direction and often control or growth is under the power of the government via the PSC. Professional sports are regulated under the office of the Games and Amusements Board, and despite the gallantry of chairman Monchu Guanzon and his board, their hands are also tied by fees and other revenues which are still priced from the 1970’s, when the agency was first formed. To their credit, they have expanded the sports under their supervision, adding motocross and soon, perhaps jet ski, as well. So, obviously, the system needs streamlining. How can the POC and PSC co-exist peacefully in a personality-driven society? There may be diplomacy for one term, then outright fighting the next. It’s a six-year rollercoaster at best, one that leaves the athletes dizzy.

If we are going full-bore with a government regulatory body, then let us elevate the PSC to a department. Other countries have it, why not the Philippines? There have been a handful of attempts to bring together all the disparate measures on both chambers of Congress to come up with a unified Department of Sports Law. The latest attempt was by Sen. Antonio Trillanes to consolidate 11 measures of legislation into one. As of now, it has not turned out any comprehensive new laws. And when candidacies are announced this month, none of that will matter anymore. Someone else will blow the dust off this decaying idea and use it as a unique soapbox. Imagine, it took the Arnis Law nine years to be enacted, and it still hasn’t been fully implemented since it was signed in December of 2010.

If the system is not changed, then we will still have the same conflicts, the same fiefdoms, the same dynasties in sports. The lucky ones have patrons who will support them without the government’s help, but that won’t last forever. Our athletes’ allowances are not competitive to any company’s management-level wages. Consultants get paid much more than athletes, and foreign coaches get paid even more, because that is the international standard.