Banging the drums again for Cojuangco’s exit
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA—Ringleaders of the latest effort to oust Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) president Jose “Peping” Cojuangco will adamantly insist that their drive received a jolt of energy during a rally at the Rizal Memorial Stadium Thursday.
Their movement is also lighting up like a Christmas tree on social media. But there’s widespread doubt that the stubborn Cojuangco will resign anytime soon.
In a utopian world, the 83-year-old former Tarlac solon would have stepped down after the country’s repeated debacles in international competitions.
On his fourth four-year team, the wreckage of another PH crash is strewn all over the just concluded 29th Southeast Asian Games in Kuala Lumpur where we placed sixth in an 11-nation field.
The conceited Cojuangco thinks he is the best gift to local sports. Backed by an obedient POC general assembly, he again has casually dismissed PH’s cheerless stint in Kuala Lumpur with his cockeyed don’t-worry-be-happy mindset.
Vocal and disenfranchised national sports association heads, exasperated with Peping’s leadership, have since left the sporting scene, leaving the bulk of the 44-member assembly eating out of his palm with regularity.
Peping’s servile lackeys in the assembly are not about to ram through a vote of no confidence against him. They are determined to perpetuate their godfather in power.
The malaise wracking Philippine sports brought to light in the last SEA Games “is not something to be happy about,” said Chair William Ramirez of the Philippine Sports Commission, the nation’s sports policy and funding agency.
Ramirez’s assessment was among many on the SEA Games fiasco—the latest on Cojuangco’s watch was amplified by Inquirer sports editor Francis Ochoa, who also highlighted another season of discontent for those trying to bring change.
Wrote Ochoa in last Sunday’s Inquirer: “The SEA Games may be the lowest form of multisport competition, but it is the first step to the real goal of finally winning an Olympic gold. And it is the first place to look at if Ramirez intends to figure out what ‘painful lesson’ there is to learn from our latest failure.”
Talks for a rematch of the classic middleweight bout between Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin that ended in a draw in Las Vegas last Saturday night will begin next week. Alvarez’s promoter Eric Gomez said he would sit down with Tom Loeffler, his counterpart in Golovkin’s camp because the “fight was so good, it merits a rematch” likely to be held in May.
(I came to know the artistry of Da Vinci, the robot, not the Renaissance man, more than three weeks ago. Instead of an open heart surgery, cardiac surgeons at Mercy Medical Center here elected a robotic procedure for me. Miniature surgical tools inserted through a few small incisions on the right side of my ribs were controlled by attending doctors and Da Vinci with enhanced vision and precision to perform the operation successfully. I’m back home mending slowly).
