Limpag: Rejoice PH sports, Peping is finally out

I WAS taking a rest after lunch yesterday when suddenly, the notifications on my phone went haywire, beeping almost every other second. I checked what it was and learned of one of the unexpected good news in Philippine sports since Hidilyn Diaz won the silver medal in Rio last 2016. Ricky Vargas has unseated long-time Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) president Peping Cojuangco from the post.

I wasn’t too hopeful going into the elections yesterday, even if Vargas’ camp claimed it has 27 votes, because being the wily operator that he is, I expected Peping to either make some last-minute disqualification of Vargas or manipulate Vargas supporters to shift sides.

It happened in the past, one of the reasons Peping has ruled the POC for more than a decade. But when I checked for news about what Peping has done or did after the election, I got unexpected bliss to from Spin, which reported that “Cojuangco, meanwhile, left the hall minutes after the POC election committee made the Vargas’ win official.”

In the same report, Vargas, whose court case forced Peping’s camp to hold the re-election, said, “This is for the athletes...This is for Philippine sports to be one again.”

Vargas is right, Cojuangco has been a polarizing figure in Philippine sports for so long, disrupting the affairs of national sports associations (NSAs) that he thinks are unsupportive of him. One such NSA is volleyball, whose officers he had replaced with Joey Romasanta (the same guy in charge of karatedo) close to four years ago.

Among the reasons Peping cited was the Philippine Volleyball Federation’s failure to send a team to the SEAG in 2013, while conveniently withholding the fact that it was Peping himself who blocked volleyball’s entry in that SEAG. According to Ramon Fernandez, the vocal critic of Peping who has been calling for his ouster for over two years, Vargas’ first order of business is an audit of the POC finances, and that’s a welcome move.

From 2010 to 2016, Peping and the POC had it easy after getting their own man, Richie Garcia, appointed at the PSC and it is this term’s PSC officials who are going after the POC and the NSAs to liquidate over P125 million in financial assistance the government agency had given in those six years.

What else? The POC regularly receives funds from the IOC and if today’s PSC has no idea where the 2016 $2,500 financial aid from the IOC to each Olympian went, what else did our Olympians not receive in 2004, 2008, and 2012?

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