Defers dropping Obiena from PH team
HEEDING the call of Malacanang and the Philippine Sports Commission, the Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association has decided to delay enforcing its decision dropping pole vaulter Ernest John Obiena from the national team.
“In deference to the comments made by Malacanang and due respect to the PSC and its Board of Trustees… on behalf of the Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association Board of Directors, the PATAFA has agreed to defer the implementation of the recommendations made in the Fact-Finding Report dated December 29, 2021 for a period of two weeks,” Patafa Chairman Rufus Rodriguez said in a letter to the PSC last Wednesday.
“Patafa strongly urges all the parties to submit to PSC mediation and explain the matter of mediation at the said forum. This decision has always been consistent with Patafa’s consent and willingness to submit to the PSC’s offer for mediation as relayed in its letter dated December 7, 2021,” Rodriguez added.
The local track body was responding to PSC Chairman William Ramirez’s initiative for all parties involved — Patafa, Obiena and the Philippine Olympic Committee — to have a dialogue and sort out the issues like “sportsmen,” with the PSC willing to act as the mediator, in a statement issued last Wednesday.
Acting Malacanang spokesman Secretary Karlo Nograles expressed a similar sentiment in a press briefing the same day.
“We continue to support all of our athletes, including our star pole vaulter EJ Obiena and we hope that whatever disagreements that he may have… between EJ and the Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association, hopefully they will all be threshed out for the allegations of fund misuse and other such allegations,” Nograles said.
In the PSC statement, Ramirez laid down four demands to Patafa, Obiena and the POC in the hope of settling the matter once and for all:
For Obiena to immediately finish his liquidation accounts of the funds given to him in support of his training and Olympic preparations, including the salaries meant for Ukrainian coach Vitaly Petrov;
For Patafa to reconsider dropping Obiena from its national pool and provide a means for him to appeal while delaying the decisions made against him;
For the POC “to bridge the two parties (Obiena and Patafa) as the mother organization of both” and reconsider its board decision to declare Juico persona non grata and declare a media moratorium by all three on the controversy until the matter is resolved.
Based on the findings of the Administrative Committee, which the Patafa board led by President Philip Juico had approved, the local track body wants to drop Obiena from the national team and sue him for estafa.
Patafa also intends to file an ethics complaint against Petrov with World Athletics, drop him as Obiena’s coach, while declaring Dubai-based businessman James Lafferty, Obiena’s benefactor and agent, as persona non grata.
POC President and Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino has said the local Olympic body will stand by the embattled athlete and assured him that he would be able to compete in major international competitions such as the 31st Vietnam Southeast Asian Games, Hangzhou Asian Games and the 2024 Paris Olympics.
In statement, weightlifting chief and former POC chairman Monico Puentevella said he was all for supporting the PSC’s peacemaking efforts.
“Nobody wins this ego-tripping. Philippine sports is the big loser and this has to stop,” Puentevella said.
