The best “short” news of the past days was the silver medal victory of Zamboanguena Hidilyn Diaz in the Rio Olympics. Finally, after 20 years—the last being in 1996 when Onyok Velasco bagged a silver in boxing! Hidilyn did it in weightlifting, which to most of us was an Olympic sport participated in only by males. Such a great honor.
The other silver medalist was the late Anthony Villanueva, also a boxer, but that was, if memory serves me right, even before martial law was declared. Do we get silvers in the Olympics, not yet even a gold, every two decades?
Every Olympic Games and every SEA Games when we get continuously diminishing returns, we rue the state of sports development in the country. And we keep asking why, and how much the budget for sports ought to be increased.
Hopefully, the Duterte administration under the leadership of newly installed Butch Ramirez, who has worked on sports development in the local, regional and national levels in the past, would be able to establish new directions and come up with out-of-the-box solutions to the perennial drought in international competitions.
* * *
Last Sunday, having just recuperated from a respiratory ailment that got me stuck in bed for two days, news came in about the President’s “golpe” of an announcement in a military camp. By afternoon, the long list of alleged drug “coddlers” among local officials came filtering out.
What came to mind was Charles de Gaulle’s expression of admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte, his country’s greatest military leader and emperor: “L’audace…l’audace, toujours l’audace.”
For indeed, the breathtaking pace at which the new government has been addressing the drug menace can only be described as audacity of the first order. And the naming of names, some of them long whispered about in fearful tones within their towns and even provinces, has never happened in this scale before.
Sure there may have been lapses in the list provided the President, such as that of the deceased judge, or some police officials whose assignments didn’t match. Maybe even a mayor or two who seem to have been clean of illegal drugs involvement. Then again, who are we to know for certain?
But many of those mentioned have indeed been long rumored by their constituents and bandied about in loose talk. And the prevalence of drugs in their territorial jurisdiction over the many years of their tenure are undeniable. Now everybody waits in bated anticipation about forthcoming list, or lists. And many are asking, why not this governor, or this congressman? Abangan…
* * *
The sight of tons and tons of vegetables from Benguet rotting because they could not be properly transported to Metro Manila markets is so saddening. Not only because upland farmers and small traders and viajeros lose their shirts, but because all these could have been anticipated and therefore avoided.
Empty boasts about “bagsakan” centers and cold storage facilities in the previous administration are now exposed precisely for what they always were—talk. And to think that city dwellers, especially the children of the poor are so malnourished eating nothing but rice and MSG-laced instant noodle soup day-in and day-out!
One could hardly fault the city administration of Manila for banning the entry and the “bagsakan” of vegetables from the North to the clogged streets of Divisoria, except perhaps for communication and coordination. But if promised cold storage facilities had been implemented, the damage could have been minimized.
Up in Bukidnon, in the mountains of Negros, and in other highland areas, vegetable farming could be optimized with proper government support and planning, instead of the Sisyphean fixation over rice self-sufficiency, another monumental failure of the past administration. Even lowland vegetable farming for such hardy crops as ampalaya, sitaw, okra, even malunggay, could produce better incomes for lowly farmers than rain-fed palay cultivation.
Mindsets must change in many aspects of life, especially under a new government borne out of a longing for real change.
