Sports and our fractured culture of development

BENCHWARMER

Ramon S. Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- Years of covering sports up to the “Palarong Pambansa” and whatever national athletic competition came about gave me the impression that the country’s sports program reflects its over-all fractured culture of development. As national leadership changes, so does its flagship program, and, with it, its youth, educational and sports programs.

Instead of building on good programs we already have, we change existing ones once we change leadership. It’s good if the change is triggered by an honest-to-goodness vision for the better and based on what we had or have.  Instead, each  shift gives us the feeling it’s more an attempt to erase a good contribution of the past, to replace it with our own, which, in turn, would be replaced by whoever the next leadership would be. 

It leaves us a nation forever confused over these changes in name only rather in substance. A seemingly new concept with a new label is introduced when, in fact, it’s the same banana as the one it’s supposed to replace.  It gives us the sneaky suspicion that what we have here is a vicious cycle of credit-grabbing. This seems to be a common practice in a country without a unifying king but where everybody wants to be king , or, at least, a favored prince or princess.

In a country of long-range planners, we hardly have a grounded long-range plan of development. Personally, I had attended several so-called sports “summits” that end up as ends in themselves. The go the way of many expensive cultural, tourism, agricultural, or even watershed summits (often with themes of glittering generalities), which is down the drain.

Plans are shot down before they can get off the ground. Or, worse, they are aborted by cutting off their fuel pipeline or yanking out their leadership. The plans are then mothballed, only to be resurrected during the next summit, this time with a new label so they appear to be the ideas of the organizers of the planning session.

In some vital issues of the present, funding for development spadework are kept among a mafia circle, usually composed consultants attached to grant institutions and favored  non-government organizations. In some instances, as I recently heard about a program to combat global warming, the project is farmed out to a local counterpart institution. The local group implements and reports, the NGO takes the report and submits it to the funding agency, but making it appear as the NGO’s accomplishment. The beneficiary village is kept unaware as the  language used in the report can only be understood by the so-called “workers for sustainable development”. 

In some cases, existing programs are copied but renamed. Others are admittedly anchored on indigenous knowledge that had been time-tested through the generations,  but implemented with consultants hardly aware of these practices, except through their academic readings.   

From years of coverage, I presumed the “Palarong Pambansa”, was and is supposed to be the apex of the country’s youth and sports selection and training process. Yet athletes preparing for it got jolted from their training whenever the “Palaro” was canceled for lack of funding. Lack of funding could have been a valid reason, if only it’s not replaced or duplicated by another competition hatched by another agency out to make an impression of its worth. 

So we had “BatangPinoy” duplicating the elementary schools level of the “PalarongPambansa”. We had the Philippine National Games and a host of other sports “festivals” that conflict in focus, schedule and logistics with the school-based program from which the same competing athletes are drawn. They eventually all died or will die out with each change of leadership among agencies competing for turf and recognition during their appointed hour.

So a friend told me that nothing works but everything is possible – at least in the Philippines. . It’s here where we keep some vital farm-to-market roads in the rut they’re in for years while we destroy all-weather highway pavements so we can concrete them again.

It’s here where the rich complain when we cut a few of our trees to survive, but not when they readily can cut, transport and sell logs from whole forests. It’s here in Baguio where well-heeled visitors take us to task for the vanishing scent of pine yet still can obtain permits down there to clear what remains of our forests up here (especially those we deem to be beyond the commerce or domicile of man), so they can have a choice piece of Baguio.

In years of covering sports events, I was witness to semblances, if not outright acts of cheating on and off the field. Somehow, they reflect the culture of development that we have here,  specially in  politics that’s again heating up for the 2016 presidential polls. 

We had cases of unwanted, un-needed baggage who were euphemistically tagged as “chaperons” or “athletic managers” for the delegations. They ended up  as “sports tourists” who, after seeing the host region, return home midway into the competitions.  return In the development field there were and are “development tourists” who enjoy perks in living in the Third World in the guise of being development workers for 

We had cases of substandard, oversized or under-sized uniforms unfit for tracksters or baseball players. The unfit uniforms gave you the feeling they were tailored for a “Palarong Pambulsa”. In one national event, a national sports official told me media covering the event were entitled to allowances, only to be told by the disbursing officer he referred me to that there was none.

In one of the heats in track in a “Palaro” in Mindanao, a Cordillera athlete handily beat the field. His name, however, was omitted from the list of qualifiers for the final by an official at finish. Coaches and runners were prohibited to come near officials, but media were not, giving me the chance to point out the recording error. The recording official rectified the mistake - after he took a close look at my media card. 

At a “Batang Pinoy” final in taekwondo, the clear winner was the boy from Baguio, but the referee gave the match to the loser. Our delegation complained and the officials reversed the judgment after replaying the bout on the video camera footage taken by Peewee Agustin of the Baguio media pool.

In Bacolod, the referee from Barotac Nuevo, Iloilo (undoubtedly the country’s soccer capital), couldn’t accept a 0-1 beating of his squad  in the hands of the Baguio;s elementary boys squad. So he chased the winners, a cue for his own boys to follow. I drafted the protest calling for investigation and asked colleagues in the national media to publish the coach’s grave infraction of sportsmanship. An investigation was called but I was told later it was eventually called off. 

I had seen more lapses in officiating all those years that our women’s football team – the Cinderellas – dominated almost all the tournaments they registered in. Their consolation was that they love football so much they never harbored negative feelings about being robbed of victory. Of the moment was the opportunity for them to play.

In a fractured sports culture, we’re still dreaming of one day winning the world championship in basketball. In a fractured culture of development, we now have politicians promising us they’d fix poverty once we elect or re-elect them.

The thousands and millions who struggle to make ends meet everyday find this an illusion. But like watching the movies, we find escape from the quagmire through the “cure-all” television infomercials  politicians are again imposing  on us. (e-mail: mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments.)