THE Southeast Asian (SEA) Games will kick off at the end of the month and it can’t come soon enough for me. After days of nothing but disasters in the news, plus the usual “he said, she said” in politics and the daily dose of vitriol from the palace by the sea, I think we deserve a break.
It would be an added bonus to if the Angry Old Man shuts off and let the narrative be about the people, instead of ranting on and on and on.
But are we ready for the SEA Games though? Left, right or center or wherever in the political divide you ever sit, you better hope and pray (yes, including to that guy who can talk to earthquakes) that we are ready. It would be a national embarrassment if we aren’t. Doubly embarrassing since in 2015, we played the hero’s role by stepping in to volunteer to host the SEA Games as the original host begged off.
If four years later we can’t pull it off, we’d be the laughing stock of the region.
There are going to be photo-finishes in some of the venue construction, but I they’ll be finished. We need a feel-good story and nothing would be better than seeing our national team win the gold in their events. I also hope that in the rush to get things done, we haven’t overlooked other details.
I remember back in Bacolod in 2005, during the first couple of days of the games, some athletes were ferried in dilapidated jeepneys until Ceres stepped in and lent their buses. I hope there won’t be similar cases this year though I’ve seen two incidents posted online that are facepalm worthy. One is that lame welcome sign for SEA Games athletes, printed only on a bondpaper, and the other was that of the poor quality of the media IDs. I hope both incidents don’t capture the whole story and that it would be better as the days come by.
There’s this troubling story too about a losing bidder for the games IT systems seeking a TRO due to some anomalies in its disqualification. Can a court stop the games? Jeez, I hope it doesn’t come to that.
But I think, in all likelihood, we are going to have a SEA Games similar to that of 2005, when the story before the event was all about how bad it was going to be, how we were so unprepared but ended up winning the overall title.
Thailand accused us of cheating, but that only unified the rest and the overall title, which came in the final day, tasted sweeter because of that.
Here’s to us lifting the overall title in December. That will be the best gift for us.