REVIVING the Mindanao Friendship Games (MFG), Mindanao Children's Games (MCG) and the Sports for Peace starting next year is a welcome development, albeit a timely one.
Since Mindanao has been touted as a killing field due to reports of insurgencies, kidnapping, and terrorism (with the Roxas Night Market blast as the latest attempt), these sports programs will give a new face for the island that had been bereft of the attention and support it needs in terms of socio-economic policies from previous administrations.
Thus, we laud the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC), now headed by Dabawenyo William "Butch" Ramirez with two other Commissioners from Mindanao Charles Raymond Maxey and Celia Kiram, the first Muslim representation in the national sports agency, for moving Mindanao forward with this plan.
Chairman Ramirez said that the Games will address the "need for unity that has been missing in troubled Mindanao" while Commissioner Maxey said the island has long been neglected for decades and the games will correct the notion that it is a troubled land.
"We want to prove to all and sundry that peace can be achieved in Mindanao, which is truly the land of promise," Maxey said.
Who would best know Mindanao other than the Mindanaoans themselves. The current PSC board, whose composition is dominated by people from Mindanao including its executive director lawyer Carlo Abarquez who is also from Davao City, is one with President Rodrigo Duterte in addressing the need for peace in Mindanao and that sports, being a catalyst for change, is one good vehicle to achieve this.
The MFG, which was launched in 2001 at the multi-million Mindanao Civic Center in Tubod, Lanao del Norte with then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as keynote speaker, opened more opportunities for Mindanaoan athletes and coaches and other sports stakeholders - Christians, Muslims and lumads - in the island to converge and forge friendships that have never been done before. They marched together and played with each other as long lost brothers and sisters.
The MFG's inaugural success was followed up with the 2002 and 2003 editions held in Cagayan de Oro City and Mati in Davao Oriental, respectively. But sad to say, the MFG was not continued after 2003.
The Sports for Peace, meanwhile, was last held in Midsayap, North Cotabato in 2008. The participants were internally-displaced children of Moro International Liberation Front fighters. The children who were housed two or three days for sports clinics, games, and counseling.
They were given sports equipment and shoes, too. Those were a few days of learning balls and not bullets.
Also on that same year, the MCG was hosted by Davao City. It catered to children aged 13 years old and below. Children from war-torn areas, school-based athletes and out-of-school youths played and had fun. The eyes and hearts of Davao City's children athletes were opened to the plight of internally displaced children and offered them friendship during the games. The participants also learned that sports is not just competition and winning, it's bridging barriers of social and economic status, religion, color and race. All these are not learned inside the four corners of the academe.
These are the kind of sports programs Mindanao need. Yes, it's about time.