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Thursday, May 08, 2003
Oyson: Drugs, Fil-Sham scam hound PBA
By Manuel N. Oyson Jr.
Counter Punch
The Senate hearings into the so-called Fil-Shams in the Philippine Basketball Association were initially conducted to look into the citizenship qualifications of the various imports who have given the best Filipino basketball players a run for their money in terms of salaries, fat bonuses and other perks. Now, politics has been blamed for the mess.
Those who were subject of the Senate committee on games, amusements and sports investigation quietly chose to up and fly away instead of trying to contest the hearings. Others have chosen to stay to plead their case and continue to draw their fat allowances and bonuses from their respective teams.
DUBIOUS. Asi Taulava of Talk ‘N Text, Dorian Peña of San Miguel Beer, Rudolf Hatfield of Coca-Cola, John Ordoño and Ali Peek, both of Alaska, have no roots in the Philippines. So said committee chair Robert Barbers as his committee concluded its hearings on these Fil-Ams. He said their documentation as half-Filipinos as dubious.
The case of Taulava is rather intriguing. A municipal civil registrar of San Jose, Northern Samar, told Barbers’ committee that he helped fix the papers of the Fil-Tongan on the request of the brother of Gov. Raul Daza. The civil registrar, Yuri del Valle, admitted that he violated National Statistics Office policy when he certified to the existence of birth and death certificates of Taulava’s grandmother “when in fact there was none.”
LYING. Daza, a former congressman, claimed in yesterday’s Philippine Daily Inquirer, that Del Valle was lying when he claimed that Taulava had no descendants in the province and that the revelations he made before the committee were politically motivated. However, in the story datelined Tacloban City by the PDI Visayas Bureau, Daza did not elaborate who could have influenced or motivated Del Valle to make such a claim.
Barbers also said that a committee he sent to Northern Samar could not find the papers of the grandmother of Taulava. Neither could his team find records of the grandparents of Ordoño in La Union or that of Hatfield’s grandfather, also in La Union. And of Peña’s grandfather in Negros Occidental.
IMPOSTOR. The hearings are over. We expect that the committee will release its findings sooner and what its recommendations are. After this so-called inquiry into the fate of the Fil-Shams, will it also look into the widespread use of prohibited drugs and other banned substances by PBA players?
The latest twist in this bizarre episode is the disclosure of Cebuano Sen. John H. Osmena, also a committee member, that he had information that the woman who claimed that Eric Menk of Ginebra is her son is an impostor. He sought a DNA documentation to be conducted on the two. The PBA is now being rocked on both sides. Its attendance is dwindling. First, the league was hit by the Fil-Sham scam. Now, the use of banned drugs is hounding the league.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: ”We want to reiterate that we didn’t want to sabotage the staging of the Palaro in Lanao.” – Macapanton Jihad Abbas III, chairman of the Bangsa Moro Youth Movement, at the PSA Forum last Tuesday
(May 8, 2003 issue)
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