Where’s the probe?

Don’t be too overwhelmed by our topping the medal tally in the recent Southeast Asian (SEA) Games. Host countries do that, though not as often as one would expect. This is, I think the first time that we successfully did to Indonesia and Malaysia what they often did to us in past SEA Games: devastate us in the medal tally. But the more important sporting events are the Asian Games and the Olympics. Let us see how many medals we can get after this from the two major sporting events.

But first some clarifications. The description is that this is the “best performance” not of the host country but by the host country’s athletes. So House Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano does not have anything to brag about. That is why I didn’t listen to him speak when the SEA Games competition closed. I didn’t want his visage to ruin my good memories of our athlete’s performance. Now, on to the investigation.

Didn’t President Duterte promise this when our hosting suffered initial hitches because of the organizer’s failings? Cayetano is already House Speaker and yet he still maneuvered to have himself head the Philippines Southeast Asian Games Organizing Committee, a private entity. Why? Billions of pesos were spent for the SEA Games hosting. Now it is time to follow the money trail and track the people who benefited, mostly financially, from the hosting.

As if on cue, the House of Representatives is creating new issues seemingly to drown talks of probing our SEA Games hosting. There is the matter of the national budget and the insertions done by congressmen, as noted by Sen. Panfilo Lacson. Then there is the attempt to reopen talks about amending the Constitution. And the House of Cayetano seems to be succeeding. Nobody is talking anymore about the SEA Games “kaldero.”

There is also the water issue that the President himself opened. Now we are talking about Manila’s water systems instead of the SEA Games investigation. One interesting point there is the involvement of a water firm owned by Manny Villar, who seems bent to replace Manny Pangilinan, whose star shone brightly during the administration of former president Noynoy Aquino, as the country’s most favored big dog under the Duterte administration.

There was this story I read somewhere before the SEA Games opened about complaints on our use of a small mall owned by Villar for the bowling competition. We all know SM malls have better facilities, so those complaints must have been legitimate. I don’t know what happened after that but it showed that the Villar influence-peddling efforts even extended to the SEA Games. I would have liked this to be part of the probe on our SEA Games hosting.

I am confident, though, that we haven’t seen the last on our SEA Games hosting. Cayetano wanted himself to be at the front and at the center of the event to maximize his visibility. The man wants to succeed President Duterte and is doing everything, even to the point of making himself thick-faced, to realize that ambition. Which means that his potential rivals will still be out against him. Which I would say, could be good for our country.