Vote

Each time an elections takes place, I’m not too sure how to feel. Do I feel hopeful that our next leaders will lead us to happier days? Or will it all be the same? Just a show of promises that will be left unkept? It can be frustrating listening to politicians make the same pitches, promises and guarantees but what you get when they’re in office is a totally different thing. But then again, there’s always hope.     

And before I can throw more criticisms, we’ll have to take a look at our own backyard of sports. I’m afraid I can’t say that the sports world is much better off than politics. Unfortunately, the sports world is probably just as messy as the national politics scene with all the in-fighting, back-stabbing and vested interests.

At the Palarong Pambansa in Tarlac which I had the chance to witness as a spectator and as a parent, I saw a not so pleasant scene among our sports leaders. There was a city that gave allowances to their athletes. Good news, or so I thought. The athletes that represented this city in the CVIRAA team signed vouchers that indicated the amount of P1,200. Not bad at all, di ba? But the amount received by the athletes was P1,000. What happened to the P200? Moreover, these athletes were promised incentives and allowances for their medal-winning performances for the city that they represented in the Central Visayas Regional Athletic Association (CVIRAA) last February. To this day, they have yet to hear again from their sports leaders about all these promises. The athletes will surely forget that they were supposed to receive these allowances. They’ll let this pass and charge it to experience. After all, they aren’t pro athletes who play for pay. The sad part though, is that somebody might have made the money for them.

Funny but true. The same problems that we citizens complain about against our local officials are also the same in the sports world. Keeping P200 away from an athlete may be a meager amount, but if you multiply this by the number of athletes who were supposed to receive this, that’s much, much bigger. And as far as I can remember, these athletes didn’t assign or appoint the official to be their sports or business manager. This, they say, is just a reflection of the much bigger world of politics. For every peso that is supposed to go to us ordinary citizens as promised in all those campaign speeches, a portion is taken back and “vanishes.” How I wish this was all false.

This all leads me back to thinking about who should lead the country. If our leaders in the much smaller sports world are like this, then what can we expect from those above? We’re all caught in a huge web of a messy political network of leaders who are on the look-out for themselves and not for the country. The old saying that politicians love to carry babies but steal their lollipops behind their backs is so true, isn’t it?

What we need are leaders who are the total opposite of what I just described above. We need leaders who will lead and work for the country and its people, and not for themselves. We need leaders who’ll give everything back to the people and not withhold anything for themselves. Only this way will we be able to grow and progress as a nation. Do you see any of our potential leaders with these traits? So who among Noynoy, Villar, Gibo, Gordon, Bro. Eddie, Jamby and Erap should be it?

This is like a basketball game where we need role players who’ll think more for the team more than themselves. They’ll be willing to do anything for as long as the team, not the player, comes out on top. And the game has reached its highest point, crunchtime.

With the game on the line, who is your Kobe Bryant who’ll take that shot? Think about it. Our vote is going to help decide the future of the country.

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Time-out: The Milo BEST Basketball Clinic will be held May 17-22 at the Sacred Heart School Mango Campus Gym. For more info, pls contact 583-7196, 0918-939-4846 or [email protected].