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Who really is the terrorist threat of Philippine basketball?

2/18/2015

February 18, 2015

To the Editor of the Philippine Daily Inquirer: Who really is the terrorist threat of Philippine basketball?

Mr. Recah Trinidad has written a series of columns that are full of venom against Senator Antonio Trillanes and the Basketball Association of the Philippines (BAP). It went on to describe the BAP as the terrorist threat in Philippine basketball.

Trinidad conveniently quoted a guy that claims to be a sports authority and alleges to teach values to his students. How could a certain Aparicio Mequi attempt to be a messiah of Philippine basketball when he could not even get the facts right?

Is this the same Mequi who was dismissed as Philippine Sports Commission chair during the time of President Ramos due to corruption?

And here comes somebody who puts this guy’s statements into print without having checked first the veracity of such declarations.

If Mequi is really worth his salt, he would have known that the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas did not honor – and instead violated – the Bangkok Agreement signed in February 2007 that would have merged the BAP and the SBP under the name “BAP-SBP.”

The list of voting members agreed upon in the Bangkok Agreement – which had 67 for BAP and 21 for the SBP – that will take part in an election following a one-year transition period was not honored by the SBP. Instead, the SBP, the minority group, chose to call for a rump election, disowned all BAP voting members and put in only its own so it could monopolize the list that will pick the next set of officers to lead the “BAP-SBP.”

To complete the mockery of the Bangkok Agreement, the FIBA, through the unilateral decision of its secretary general Patrick Baumann, who himself was a signatory to the Bangkok Agreement, sided with the SBP for personal interests and just brushed aside the issues at hand).

Subsequently, the SBP changed the organization to simply “SBP” and the FIBA Secretariat, through Baumann, kept its silence and indirectly agreed to the illegal action by the SBP.

Prior to that, a FIBA Special Meeting was supposedly to be held in Switzerland to settle the dispute. The SBP initially said it won’t attend, even calling it a “sham,” but later decided to go even days before the meeting would take place. Days of wining and dining by the SBP and FIBA officials proved to be a major factor.

The BAP, on the other hand, was not able to attend the meeting because its representative was unable to get a visa on time. That’s because some powerful personalities had warned the Swiss embassy to delay –if not deny – the issuance of a visa to the BAP representative.

The BAP, as the aggrieved party, elevated the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Even there, the goose may have been cooked way in advance. Does that mean that some SBP and FIBA personalities had connections with CAS executives?

The death of the BAP is greatly exaggerated. It will never cease to die as an entity. What the BAP lost was the FIBA recognition.

Terrorism occurs when some people shamelessly discredit a legal entity in an attempt to illegally grab power for itself.

The SBP is the country’s national basketball association that is recognized by the FIBA following a conspiratorial action taken by the SBP, POC and FIBA against the BAP.

Now I ask: Who really is the terrorist threat of Philippine basketball? The paid hacks should have their brains examined so as to be able to distinguish fact from fiction.

It’s been a long time that sports has been dominated by political patronage. Money and power are all that matter to the national sports leadership. Their belief that only they have the authority to lead the national sports is the height of arrogance.

Now Recah, I ask you how much are the series of column worth in attacking the BAP?

Fair play demands that both sides of the story are heard.

Even seasoned veteran journalists like Recah knows this pretty well.

In the interest of fair reporting, I seek the publication of this correspondence!

Sincerely,

BAP Secretariat

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