Disasters trigger call for reform

Senate Bill No 3092 or “The Department of Sports Act of 2012” authored by Senator Antonio Trillanes has gone through, according to reports, the first reading. It is a consolidation of 11 similar bills that aims to replace RA 6847 which created the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC). There have been many comments for and against the creation of a Cabinet-level department. This agency, to be headed by a Secretary, will presumably assume responsibility for, among others putting together and implementing a sports development program which, after 22 years of the PSC, still does not exist except for the Master Plan for Philippine Sports that was crafted during the administration of President Fidel V. Ramos.

I will not join the debate at that this time. I however would like to state that continuing the initial work we did in establishing the Philippine Institute for Sports or Philsports (which President Ramos himself inaugurated) in the late 1990’s could have made life easier for the entire sports community, especially the PSC. Implementing the programs then planned by Philsports 14 years ago would have borne fruit by now and would definitely serve as further justifying the creation and operation of the proposed Department of Sports.

 That Department would need trained personnel coming from Philsports and other institutions of higher learning where physical education and sports are seriously given attention and the rigor they deserve. People with these kinds of competencies are needed to manage the regulatory and development aspects of sports, physical education and recreation in general that would fit under the umbrella of the proposed Department. Pity, those to whom the Philsports was entrusted never took it seriously opting to shelve it simply because the idea did not originate with them. We squandered golden opportunities which came our way simply because of political shortsightedness and immaturity.

At any rate, the Philsports (had it been revived and used creatively) and the sports community could have responded to many changes rapidly taking place in the sporting world brought about by science and innovation. In the book “Jump the Curve”, Jack Uldrich writes about a talk before the first ever Nano Business alliance annual meeting in New York, by American author, scientist, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. In that meeting, Kurzweil “paints a compelling picture of how exponential advances across myriad technological fields were conspiring to usher in an era of profound change”.

These myriad technological fields include sports and physical education and given our total negligence of strategic thinking, we are simply being left behind by those who have “come to terms with the awesome power of exponential change… and (realize the need) for tangible methods of dealing with profound change.”

Why has government now, some say, all of a sudden, taken an interest in sport to the point of proposing a profound and radical change that needs deeper study? The most basic response and perhaps, a knee-jerk one, is the national disappointment and frustration over the Philippines finishing sixth place in the overall medal standings at the Jakarta/Palembang Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) in 2011.

In the Introduction to the book, “Government and Sport”, authors Arthur T. Johnson and James H. Frey state that “triggering events nearly always precede the ascent of sports issues to an institution’s agenda…in amateur sports, disastrous performances in international competitions by American teams will bring about congressional clamor for reform of amateur athletics.” The two writers also state that (when) government threatens to intervene (in sport), it was usually in response to dramatic events. Now, what can be more dramatic than losing the fifth spot in the SEA Games, the ground level of Olympic-type, multi-sport competitions, to tiny city-state Singapore with a population of a little over five million, a substantial number of whom are not Singaporeans but transients and permanent residents?

It is therefore but natural for Congress or the legislative branch of government to get into the act. In the same Introduction, Johnson and Frey add that “Congress is perhaps the most important policymaking institutions with regard to professional and amateur sports. It not only adopts policy affecting sports operations and organizations through the normal legislative process, but congressional committees exercise oversight and investigative functions as well. In the case of the Philippines, it seems that Sen. Trillanes’s “Amateur Sports Competitiveness” Committee has taken the cudgels for Philippine sports by attempting to come up with new ideas.

In the American model, which we originally followed, government has always treated sport with “benign neglect”. There are several reasons for this, according to Johnson and Frey. One is, historically, sports–amateur and professional – have been presented by their representatives and perceived by the public as being merely “sport” (i.e, fun and games and diversion).

There are other reasons which we will discuss next week, including our shift to the European, Canadian and Australian model of state support for sport.