1st SEAG title for RP in the bag

Here's the balita:

Striking in nearly all fronts yesterday, Filipino athletes put themselves beyond reach of their rivals, realizing their long-cherished dream of winning their first ever overall title in the 23rd Southeast Asian Games that comes to a close today.

Congratulations to our athletes for bagging our 1st ever overall title, and to the Arroyo administration for helping make it happen.

UPDATE: Good suggestion from Neal Cruz:

THIS IS A JOKE THAT'S NOW GOING THE rounds: Perhaps Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra jumped to the conclusion that there was cheating in the SEA Games because of our notoriety. If Filipinos could cheat in such an important event as a presidential election, he must have thought, they could also cheat in sports. Especially since the person accused of having engineered the election cheating suddenly reappeared just before the start of the SEA Games. But the Thais should not point accusing fingers at the athletes or at those officiating the games but at You-Know-Who.

Poor Filipinos. A gang of cheats conspires to steal an election and the whole nation is suspected of cheating in sports.

The Thais obviously saw replays of the 4 x 10,000 race, where the Filipino runner clearly blocked the Thai who was catching up at the finish line. That was clearly cheating, and Thai television channels replayed that video clip over and over (Filipino TV channels seemed to be ashamed to show it). But that Filipino was disqualified, and the gold medal awarded to the Thai runner. Nevertheless, it convinced the Thais that there was cheating. Thaksin was playing up to the home crowd when he was interviewed; he was giving the Thai team an alibi for not accumulating the most medals as it did in past SEA Games.

What we should do is to replay all the events where Filipinos and Thais competed and which the Filipinos won; identify the referees and judges in those sports, including their nationalities, and let the people decide for themselves if there was cheating.

Transparency. I like that. Wala tayong dapat itago o ikahiya sa performance ng athletes natin.