What happened to
the Champions?

What happened? How did the Philippine contingent to the Southeast Asian Games fall so heavily from its ranking in the last one that was held in the Philippines , parts of it in Bacolod City ? As of last night, DAILY STAR sources in Thailand said that, instead of improving, the country's standing in the Games had dropped from fifth place the other day, to sixth. Weren't we the champions in the last one, the Number One, the leader of the pack?

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A sixth place finish, or even a fifth and fourth, should be unconscionable, considering that we were the champions in the last one. Not only runner-up, or a third placer, but NUMBER ONE. It seems unbelievable that we could drop to such a low position. One wonders if the officials supposed to prepare for the Thailand affair had been taking it seriously. Since we had so triumphantly grabbed the top awards last year, why didn't they make sure that the athletes could maintain their training to assure the same performances that they presented last year?

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It is very saddening, if not shameful. I remember how outraged we were when no less than the Thai prime minister, the now discredited Thaksin Shinawatra, hinted that their players were being cheated here. Because of that, great effort should have been exerted to prove to those other ASEAN teams that our success last year was no fluke, that we did not make it by cheating. What is worse is that our sports officials are now making the same hints that Shinawatra made. In fact, one of our latest report last night was that some teams are thinking of pulling out, or boycotting their events to show their disgust.

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Let's all hope they don't do that. If we had been afraid of being cheated from the start, we should have pulled out then and there. Not when we have been having a miserable showing, brightened only by some individual event athletes, some of whom are not even Pinoy born or bred, and not even pure Filipino citizens. Maybe our local ones have already been demoralized, because even before the games began, sports officials were already conceding defeat, nobody sounded upbeat, so what do you expect the players themselves to feel? Maybe miracles will happen today and we will suddenly grab 50 gold medals so we can outshine Thailand . Well, we won in our place, maybe we should let them win in theirs.

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I was in Manila again these past three days and was surprised that nobody seemed interested in talking about the SEA Games. I didn't even hear anybody complaining about the alleged biased judging, calls or decisions. But maybe it was because I was in the company of media executives who had been invited to fine-tune the proposed adoption of what has been given the name of “Peace Journalism”. This is a concept which could be described, briefly, as a way of covering or writing about conflicts or violence without stressing on the er, negative. I think I committed blasphemy when I used the term “brain-washing” for it, albeit jokingly.

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Anyway, this was the second meeting of our group in two weeks, the last, or the introductory one, was held last week at the Linden Suites – now wasn't that the historic place where then Vice President Gloria Arroyo holed out while her friends were staging EDSA II for her to unseat Erap Estrada? Anyway, last Tuesday's meeting was held at the posh Astoria Plaza , also in Pasig . As we were driving into the area, I noted this very tall and imposing building and told my nephew that I wouldn't want to stay at such heights because of my acrophobia. Well, he told me, condition yourself, because that is where you are going to stay for two days. The hotel has some 41 storeys, and we had our rooms on the 19 th floor! I couldn't look out of the glass walls without feeling tingly behind my knees.

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The meetings made us realize that, like medicine, journalism has now gone into specializations. To the old school it was simply defined as “History on the run”, and what was news was “When a man bites a dog”. Alas, it has gotten more complicated than that. This time we are not supposed to sympathize with the dog. Anyway, for a backgrounder, this is a project co-sponsored by the Philippine Press Institute, the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication, and the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process. Its head, secretary Jesus Dureza, joined us for lunch and subtly recalled his “regular journalism” days, also as a community journalist. Dureza also had a good time reminiscing with his old friend and mentor, Dr. Crispin Maslog, one of the most respected gurus of conventional journalism, and now an ardent exponent of the one in step with the times, Peace Journalism.*

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