PHILIPPINE Sports Commission's resident enforcer Ramon Fernandez seemed like a lone voice in the wilderness when he exposed, in a series of social media posts, the various funds the Philippine Olympic Committee received from its share of the Olympic Solidarity pie of the International Olympic Committee.
It wasn’t that big; a few thousand dollars here and there, 10 grand for expenses related to getting our Olympians to Rio and the odd thousands of dollars for the Beijing and London Olympics too. Sure, if you convert it to pesos, it amounted to millions but compared to the unliquidated financial assistances from the PSC under the previous administration, it’s peanuts.
But peanuts or not, the IOC noticed that the POC never liquidated the amount and fortunately, instead of pushing their equivalent of a COA down the stairs or ignoring their directives, the IOC has reminded the POC to liquidate the amount, which now totalled $59,963, including $36,000 for the Rio Olympics.
That $36,000 grand is interesting because like what El Presidente pointed out, it was for logistics and transportation, something the PSC spent for for our Olympians in Rio. It wasn’t mentioned but the IOC also gave $2,500 per Olympian through the POC in Rio, the said amount, according to our Rio Olympians, never reached them.
Now the IOC has come calling and thankfully, the POC president isn’t Digong and won’t push them down the stairs for daring to ask where the money was spent.
“I am embarrassed by our inability to settle this issue. This does not speak well of the POC with the IOC and if we need to return the money, I am inclined to do so.”
I’m glad Vargas, who finally kicked out Peping Cojuangco, who overstayed for 14 years, thinks that way. Yes, it does not speak well of the POC, which stayed silent all these years about the numerous financial assistance it got from the IOC. Imagine, the POC officials got $5,000 from Digong for the Rio Olympics but they also got a total of $36,000 from the IOC, which is now asking where the money was spent. In the early part of my career, I’ve sympathized with POC officials when they say there’s no money in sports but I’ve learned otherwise.
There’s a lot of money in sports and it comes in the form of financial assistance from the IOC and its member associations. Heck, even the POC has a share of the earnings from the Olympic logo patent; where do all these funds go explains why people fight tooth and nail to stay in office. As for Vargas I hope he is serious when he said that someone has to be responsible for the mismanagement because he doesn’t have to be a detective to know who that someone is since Cojuangco still sits as a member of the POC board. We need accountability in sports. For so long our officials have made a milking cow out of our athletes and finally we have a POC president who sees the need of being transparent. I just hope he’s not all talk and will really fight corruption.