OUTSIDE their increasingly bitter dispute over rocks, shoals and parcels of islets strewn on the West Philippine Sea that are said to be rich in oil and natural gas deposits, the Philippines and China are engaged in another bitter showdown—and the world is waiting with bated breath which one will be victor or vanquished.
It is a conflict that is emotional and that recalls their rivalry that began in 1913.
There will be no bloodshed, only perhaps hurt egos. There will be a winner—and a loser, for they are the only remaining combatants.
And there will be a decision, final and un-appealable, which China’s vaunted might, muscle, intimidation and double-speak—the hallmarks of its aggressive land-grabbing strategy in the West Philippine Sea that threw away the niceties of diplomacy—would not be able to roll back.
The Philippines and China are set to lock horns one last time in Tokyo next month over the right to host the next International Basketball Federation (FIBA) World Cub, formerly the world championship. It is Asia’s turn to host the quadrennial event in 2019. And the tournament, being only a rare celestial visitor to the Orient, as rare a Halley’s Comet, will bestow to the not only the glow of prestige to the winner, but a heavenly show of the game’s brightest lights that will mesmerize even the most jaded fans.
The showdown may seem like a David-versus-Goliath face-off—and indeed it is—and Filipinos are praying for the same biblical ending to happen. Unafraid of the colossus in the Asian mainland, local basketball’s knight in shining armor, that man Manny V. Pangilinan or MVP, is sending the Philippines’s biggest name in sports to collar a tournament that occupies the largest chamber in the Filipinos’ hearts.
No less than the Pacman himself, Manny Pacquiao, all of his five-foot-seven frame, all of his boxing title belts, all of his legend, and all that reputation as the world’s greatest pound-for-pound boxer of the this decade, will be thrown into this Philippine bid.
And in Tokyo, Manny the boxer will not be the slingshot of a hope of Manny the business tycoon and the legions of Filipino basketball fans. The Pacman, despite his recent slippage, his creeping age at thirty-six, is the equivalent of a one-man commando—the Navy Seal sent on the most difficult rescue missions and coming home victorious.
The Pacman himself made a terse statement that must have been threatening to China’s bid for the same event. “Yes, I’m going to Tokyo with the Philippine delegation,” he said in a story posted this week, “to help in our bid to host FIBA 2019.”
Tokyo would be the graveyard for China’s World Cup dream if the Pacman’s fame—though now in inevitable eclipse—could have the force of a battering ram to crack open the FIBA’s hard-to-win approval, and bring the world championship only for the second time to basketball-crazy Manila.
It will not matter in Tokyo that the Pacman, as explosive as he is in boxing, with a decade of dominance on the world stage unmatched by any Filipino fighter, remains today a dud in basketball.
It will not matter that he has not played competitive minutes in the pro league, where he has signed on as playing coach of the expansion team Kia. And it will not matter that he hasn’t had the same effect on his fans in boxing. He remains a revered figure in sports and his fans cut across the great divide. They are as packed with anonymous, faceless masses, as they are with the famous and celebrated names in sports, business, politics and the movies. The fans are whites and blacks, brown and yellow, and I wouldn’t be surprise if in China, his name and face are as recognizable as that of Yao Ming, for his brand of boxing—relentless, exciting, never-say-die—are the stuff of fighters that claimed the status as universal idols.
Yes, I believe, as many Filipino fans of boxing and basketball do, that the Pacman magic will have an electrifying effect on the decision makers of FIBA. Putting his fame on the line, in the name of fans of the sport, is something that China cannot possibly complain about.
If all goes well, the Philippines will take center stage once more, in a game where the world spotlight shone on Manila in 1978, only a few years after the Thrilla in Manila between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.
The world championship mystique goes a decade farther back. Manila won the bid the host it as early as 1962—it was the first city in Asia, the first city outside its birthplace in South America to be bestowed with such honor. But typically, at a moment of approaching glory, Filipino policy-makers got in the way of a purely sporting event.
They withheld entry visas to the players of Yugoslavia, then still a nation, and belonging to the Eastern Bloc of communist states, forcing Russia, then part of the bigger Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, to reconsider its participation.
Filipino basketball officials, led by then Sen. Ambrosio Padilla, had begged Malacañang to allow the so-called communist athletes to play because they were not, as claimed by policy-makers, a threat to the national security. It was a plea that fell on deaf ears. The fears were overblown, but it was a time of the Cold War, that geopolitical battle between the world’s democracies and world communism.
The biggest casualty was the Manila championship. It was cancelled, and awarded elsewhere, inviting upon the Philippines unprecedented punitive measures.
The ascendancy of the two Mannys—Pacman and the tycoon—will be a boon to this generation of Filipino players. It will not bring us any closer to the world title, but it might bring us closer to that near-impossible dream—a return to Olympic basketball.