Day of infamy in Philippine sports

If the record-breaking dragon boat paddlers don’t place themselves under the Canoe and Kayak Federation, Garcia said, they will continue to eat tahong (mussels).
Garcia is the same person who refused to extend any help whatsoever to the dragon boat team because the federation had been removed as an NSA (national sports association) by the Philippine Olympic Committee headed by its president Jose ”Peping” Cojuangco.
Garcia, meanwhile, is prepared to assist the Australian organizers of the V8 Supercars Championships series in the country.
Incredible double standard.
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In a POC general assembly meeting at Wack Wack Golf and Country Club, Cojuangco and his cohorts, including chair Monico Puentevella and Mark Joseph, among others, declared athletics and karatedo president Go Teng Kok “persona non grata” and expelled him from the POC.
The POC charter requires a three-fourths vote of its members, voting in a general assembly, and not by a resolution alleging acts inimical to the members of the POC. The resolution was reportedly signed by 34 members whose signatures were collected on a piecemeal basis and which Go and his lawyer, former Olympian chess player Sammy Estimo, were not even allowed to verify.
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We have had many quarrels with Go through the years and don’t consider ourselves a friend of the man. But when an injustice is committed against anyone and when due process is cast aside, we are committed to use the pen to denounce such irregularities. It is not only a journalist’s right, it is also his responsibility.
Go begged to be heard but his pleas were apparently drowned out by Puentevella, who arbitrarily ruled that he had no right to be heard and could not participate in the deliberations.
Even a criminal is given the right to his day in court but the POC, functioning more like a kangaroo court, denied him his fundamental rights.
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The International Olympic Committee Charter states in pure, unvarnished English: “Any individual, team or… legal entity has the right to be heard by the IOC body competent to apply a measure or sanction to such individual, team or legal entity. The right to be heard in the sense of this provision includes the right to be acquainted with the charges and the right to appear personally or to submit a defense in writing.”
How can Cojuangco and his allies ignore the provisions of the Charter of the IOC from which the POC draws its mandate?
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What is also questionable is that Manny Lopez, a Cojuangco supporter, reportedly voted for the expulsion resolution when he had not been given authority, verbally or in writing, by the president of the Amateur Boxing Association of the Philippines, Ricky Vargas.
Another glaring anomaly is that the POC, according to Estimo, allowed Enrico Vasquez to vote as president of karatedo when Judge Rodolfo Bonifacio of the Pasig Regional Trial Court had enjoined Vasquez from “performing and exercising the functions and powers of president.”
In another show of the arrogance of power, Cojuangco, the uncle of President Aquino, said that “no law or court can interfere (in POC affairs).”
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It was Go’s so-called army who gave us the most number of gold medals in the 2009 SEA Games in Laos and was once named the NSA of the Year in the prestigious Philippine Sportswriters Association’s Annual Awards.
This has all been forgotten in an act of vindictiveness carried out in a manner that is an affront to the rule of law and due process and highlights the pits into which Philippine sports has been dragged.