Since the issue between Olympian EJ Obiena and the Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association (Patafa) broke out late last year, the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) has been trying very hard to bring both parties to the table to talk and settle the matter amicably.
Unfortunately, PSC chairman Butch Ramirez has been ignored.
The Philippine Olympic Committee (POC), instead of acting like a sports organization, has also added fuel to the fire by declaring Patafa president Philip Ella Juico a persona non grata. While that played well to the clueless public, who sees this as an issue of an NSA harassing a gifted athlete as in the case of Wesley So, the move to declare Juico persona non grata is basically useless.
Why? Consider what POC president Bambol Tolentino said when the POC general assembly confirmed the move against Juico; he still sits as Patafa president, Patafa isn’t ousted from the organization and POC will reconsider the move once the issue is settled amicably.
Do you know what that reminds me of? The movie “Mean Girls,” how this bunch of high schoolers basically tell anyone outside their clique, “you can’t sit with us.”
Short of telling everyone to stop acting like high schoolers, PSC has given all parties the best option—mediation, but sadly it has been ignored. Ramirez, too, told everyone to settle this dispute as sportsmen, that too has been ignored. Ramirez bluntly told both parties to have the humility to face each other, while adding that Obiena should refrain from listening to the people surrounding him.
I think that’s a rebuke against Obiena’s long-time patron Jim Lafferty, who has also been adding fuel to the fire. When it comes to Obiena, Lafferty isn’t transparent. Why? Two years ago, he wrote about how Obiena lacked government support and how it was only through the generosity of Juico that the Olympian was able to train under Vitaly Petrov.
The liquidation of the government support given to Obiena, one that Lafferty said was absent two years ago, is the root of this issue.
What do you do when there’s a conflict in a sports organization? You bring both parties to the table to meet, under an authority that both parties recognize. Sadly, the authority in this case that could have helped resolve it, the POC, is acting like the POC of old.
Why are they ignoring Ramirez and the PSC? Is it because they are on the final five months of their term and that after May, the next PSC chairman may not be as independent as Ramirez and may be beholden to the POC chair like in previous admins?
In a move that shows how Ramirez has run the PSC with out-of-the-box ideas in the past six years, the agency tapped the Philippine Dispute Resolution Center Inc. to be the impartial body to settle the dispute.
Unfortunately, only Patafa is submitting itself to the process, while Obiena and the POC prefer to play to the crowd, extending the feud that should have been settled as quickly as two months ago.
Makes you want to ask, who benefits from this dispute?