The Philippine athletes we’ve fielded in the 23rd Southeast Asian Games have bagged so many Golds (their goal of 120 Golds still hasn’t been achieved by this deadline, but already, as of 6:30 p.m. yesterday our sportsmen and women had won 110 Gold Medals).
The gap simply can’t be bridged anymore by Thailand which is thus far coming in second with 72 golds, plucky Vietnam with 62, Malaysia with 55, Indonesia with 46, Singapore with 42, and Laos with one.
Today’s Gold count, in the last few events, won’t matter much – so let’s break out the Basi, Lambanog, Champagne – and the beer; or better still, send a prayer of thanks to heaven for our athletes having done so magnificently.
Will some Thais continue griping? Of course, some will. But basically the Thais are a wonderful people – even though, like ours, their politicians and blusterers suffer from diarrhea of the mouth. The eleven nations who competed and played in the SEAG can have no cause to repent their losing, or winning, in certain events. Their athletes and contenders gave their all.
Did we have homecourt advantage? Yes, of course: we were playing on our own turf, but we triumphed not by "cheating" but through effort and perseverance. Our victory was achieved with, no thanks to our sports officials who’re now trying to claim credit, a surge of spirit and adrenalin on the part of our athletes who pushed themselves to the limit to achieve their goals.
Hurrah! Mabuhay! And God bless them all!
Individual contenders, however, made up for the slack by investing all of themselves, from sacrifice, and unrelenting effort – and hope – to streak to the finish, or batter their way to glory, not just for themselves but for their country. With heads bared in pride and admiration, we salute them today.
If you’ve noticed, many, probably most of our winners came from our Armed Forces – from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and some from the Police. This is a revelation. In retrospect, though, it should not have caught us by surprise. Our military have a sports development program within their set-up, subsidized by our meagre armed forces budget. As commander-in-chief La Presidenta must commend this – and expand it mightily. A fit military was the guerdon the AFP’s sports programs, which their constant jogging, marching and exercises were meant to achieve. The upsurge in morale of SEAG victory will have to be harnessed to produce not just the mightiest army, but the strongest in sportsmanship and teamwork, a guts and glory group capable of overcoming all odds.
Let’s raise high, then, our flag today! We must celebrate in a season where there’s not much else to celebrate (except the coming of Christmas). From stultifying political gloom to the unifying pounding of the heart that comes with the victory of our best of the best in the arena of sports competition!
National sports fests are always a way of unifying a people, lifting sagging morale and more importantly, of boosting a sluggish economy.
This happened in Paris back in 1998. At the time France was feeling the pinch of a morose national and worldwide economy. Politically, the nation was divided with an anti-immigration sentiment dominating all fronts. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National Party was virtually instigating a racial divide. He was saying "French First" and even those that were not normally inclined to follow his nasty lead were attracted by his demagoguery. Labor unions were staging protests left, right and center. The overall national feeling was anger and dissatisfaction.
However, the 1998 World Football Cup (Mondiale) in France changed all that. The French National Team kicked its way to triumph, defeating the shocked Brazilians who had been seeded for "sure" victory. In Paris, we saw dancing in the streets, cars honking about all night long – "We’re the Champions!" the previously disheartened French shouted.
In an era when national leaders were calling for careful spending, the French spent, shopped and celebrated like there was no tomorrow. What that spending spree did was get money circulated; businesses, big and small thrived, employment rose. There were other things that happened but the most important of them all was France was suddenly united. In one single stroke, the French victory saw politicians even from the extreme right, and people of all creeds, races, colors, stations in life cry proudly in unison "Vive la France!" "Vive la Republique!"
The pessimism, the malaise, the sluggishness were all replaced by a national unity unseen in decades. The World Cup drove up the sluggish economy to heights that the country had not witnessed in two decades.
France in that victory proudly displayed its tricolor, and televised its people, its wealth, its culture and its unity to a cumulative audience of 37 billion people worldwide, the largest TV audience in history.
What about us?
The King’s name is spelled Bhumibol and sometimes Bhumibon, but pronounced Phumipol (Thai pronunciation is particularly tricky).
On December 5, 1987, the King (ceremonially known as Rama IX, meaning he is the 9th in the Chakri dynasty) commemorated not just his 60th birthday but the completion of the 5th of the 12-year cycles sacred to the Lord Buddha. This year, another celebration marks the King becoming the longest reigning monarch in Thai history.
And yet, King Bhumibol Adulyadej was not originally destined to rule. He was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the USA, the third and youngest child of Prince and Princess Mahidol of Songkhla. He spent only a brief period of primary schooling in Bangkok, then was taken to Switzerland at the age of five where he lived most of his early years, studying at the Ecole Nouvelle de la Suisse Romande, near Lausanne. He was bent on a career in science when his elder brother, King Ananda Mahidol, was found dead in his bed chamber with a bullet hole in the head.
The youthful Prince Bhumibol was faced with the sudden and unexpected responsibility of ruling a country he scarcely knew. After symbolically assuming the Crown, he rushed to complete his studies abroad and finally returned with a degree from Lausanne’s University of Sciences and a smattering of law. He had also crammed into his curriculum a crash course in Siamese classicism. (He sadly left behind in Europe a jazz band which he had personally organized – as well as his stable of fast cars.)
Consistently enough, he met his queen, not in Thailand, but in Paris. The lovely 17-year-old Princess Sirikit caught his eye when she hopped over from London (where dad was the Thai Ambassador) to attend a "be-bop" session in the French capital. It proved a partnership that has, over the intervening over half a century, endeared the monarchy to the Thai people. King Bhumibol, whom tragedy propelled unexpectedly to the throne, has ruled wisely and well – tirelessly traveling all over his country from north to south.
The commoners don’t have to ring a bell. The King comes to them. As protocol dictates, he has even mastered the technique of sitting motionless on his golden throne for hours, without moving a muscle, through all those yawn-inducing and interminable court ceremonials.
It is the King who unifies the nation, despite occasional outbursts of turbulence and violence. For all its deceptive tranquility in repose, Thailand is known as the "Land of Coups." The coup d’etat used to be as Thai as Number One Soup and the festival of Loy Krathong, or the graceful clasping of hands in prayer, salutation or tribute called the wai.
Since the end of the Second World War, this planet has experienced more than 280 coups d’ etat in 76 different countries – half the sovereign states represented in the United Nations. Of these, 151 have been successful. Argentina may beat Thailand by a hair statistically, but Thailand comes second with about 19 coups or aborted coup attempts.
Thailand, for example, had a successful coup in 1951, followed by another in 1958. The next took place in 1971. There was still another one in 1976, followed by an unsuccessful try in 1977. The last "successful" coup took place in 1977. During the Premiership of Gen. Prem Tinsulanonda, there were two ill-starred attempts to oust Prem’s government – one in 1981 and the second in September, 1985. I had just landed at Bangkok’s Don Muang airport – about 25 kilometers from the city – when we heard the rattle of gunfire and the boom of cannon: the unmistakable sound of a coup attempt in progress. It was a bloody one. Three persons, including two foreign journalists, were killed.
What was unique about this sad episode is that like all coups in Bangkok, it was aimed at booting out the Prime Minister and his government, but never the King.
Today, there are no more coup attempts. As yet.