Can Uncle Peping seek change ala P-Noy?
By Recah Trinidad
PhilBoxing.com
Mon, 23 Jan 2012
Cojuangco.
WILL somebody please ask Peping Cojuangco if he?s surprised that nobody has stood up to challenge him for the presidency of the Philippine Olympic Committee.
Cojuangco, 79, recently announced he would seek a third straight term as POC head. Either there was nobody bold enough to challenge Cojuangco, or others have totally lost interest in the national Olympic polls.
?Who will dare fight him for the country?s top Olympic post?? wrote my first sports editor here, Doc Manolo Inigo. ?Praised and pilloried at the same time, Cojuangco?s administration was a wildly mixed combination of sporting highs and lows.?
**
Ever sharp, Inigo noted that, under Cojuangco, the Philippines won the overall championship of the Southeast Asian Games for the first time in 2005 when Manila hosted the biennial regional meet.
That was indeed a ?high? in the Cojuangco reign.
In the same breath, Inigo said the Philippines ?suffered a shocking setback,? and dropped to a shameful sixth overall in the last SEA Games in Jakarta. It was added that, under Cojuangco, Filipino athletes returned home without winning a single medal from the 2004 Olympics in Athens and the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.
**
Meanwhile, there have been resounding cries against Cojuangco?s alleged mafia tactics in running the POC and squeezing in choice officials to run national sports associations. In the national Olympic polls after the Beijing Olympic polls, Cojuangco nipped Arthur Macapagal by two votes that, as popularly believed, were delivered by the controversial national track and field president Go Teng Kok.
Go, or GTK, has since fallen out of Cojuangco?s grace.
**
Go was asked yesterday if they could muster enough votes to challenge Cojuangco. He did not answer with figures.
He instead took another hard shot at his former boss: ?NSA leaders know why he (Cojuangco) is running again: To prolong his unwanted power, take hostage those who are against his will and evade the plunder case he?s facing. I?m sure that the silent majority will have a strong stand against him. He can run but he can?t hide. Truth will prevail this time.?
**
In fairness to Cojuangco, he should have been asked to bare his platform for this year?s POC election.
Maybe he did not find this necessary, as he seems the only one interested in the top national Olympic post.
Unknown to many though, the name of one tested and highly respected head of a top- performing NSA is being whispered as the most qualified to challenge Cojuangco. This fellow, who said he was flattered by the suggestion, will remain anonymous for the moment.
**
Meanwhile, there were also those who wondered if Cojuangco, once given a worthy challenger, would bother to at least state his platform.
He may never need it, but that?s only if the country finally wins its first Olympic medal in the London Games.
Based on the last reading, that illusive gold has grown doubly elusive, no thanks to misdirected priorities among our top sports leaders.
Will Peping Cojuangco therefore end up declaring a war against decay in Philippine sports, the way his nephew Noynoy has nobly stood up against corruption?
Please don?t ask Go Teng Kok.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Recah Trinidad.
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