On Wednesday when the Philippine Olympics Committee holds its General Assembly for the month of March, Peping Cojuangco’s long and turbulent presidency comes to a test.
For on this day, the Philippine Volleyball Federation will challenge Cojuangco’s high-handed management of the country’s Olympic body as well as seek the support of its fellow national sports associations (NSAs) to stop, once and for all, the many injustices in POC.
With Cojuangco tagged by the PVF as the main culprit, the PVF is threatened with exclusion from the POC without the required due process nor even the approval of the general assembly.
With Cojuangco as its president, the POC has been transformed into a one-man rule of whims and caprices that saw many honest and dedicated sports officials disenfranchised.
Worse, Cojuangco is set to go down in history as the POC president whose more than 10 years of tenure saw Philippine sports go spiralling to a darkest pit.
Filipino athletes, including a lady cyclist who earned the right to compete in the Olympics, were not spared by Cojuangco’s dictatorial rule.
Filipino athletes are now less cared for, hardly trained and treated as second-class citizens while Cojuangco and his few allies lord it over the local sportsdom.
On Wednesday, the PVF seek to be heard by the general assembly which, under the POC constitution, is the only power to vote and approve the acceptance and expulsion of a sports association.
In the case of the PVF, Cojuangco is set to disenfranchise the old association and replace it with a finance-oriented group led by one of his few allies.
Now that is injustice of the lowest of the low.
