One-sided SEA Games

The 32nd Southeast Asian Games in Cambodia are touted to be the biggest in history. The calendar consists of 608 events in 49 sports, with no qualifiers needed. But it will also be one of the most controversial, with institutionalized limits on the participants that visiting countries may field. This magnifies the already skewed manner in which the biennial competition has been run for past decades. More and more power to unfairly stack the deck in their favor is given to the hosts, defeating the purpose of the Games in the first place.

The original vision of the Southeast Asian Peninsular Games (SEAP), as they were originally called when they were founded in 1958, was two-fold. The first objective was “to promote better relations among the countries of peninsular Southeast Asia.” The second was “to enhance the performance of member nations in the larger Olympics and Asian Games,” considering the high caliber of opponents there. Sadly, it looks like those noble visions have been set aside in the desire to win more medals. Cambodia is doing all it can – supposedly within the rules – to improve its standing even before the competition starts. Even though they certainly won’t win the overall championship, a third- or fourth-place finish as a first-time host would certainly salvage a lot of pride. They already have home field advantage. Their athletes practice in the venues to be used for the actual competition. And they have no travel costs or adjustments to make.

Let’s go over the constraints placed by the hosts on the other countries, a practice which was supposedly begun by Malaysia in the 2017 SEA Games. In boxing, no other country is allowed to join all weight classes. (The Philippines has three actively competing Olympic medalists in boxing.) In gymnastics, only two golds each are allocated for men and women.(The Philippines has Caloy Yulo, a world champion in multiple gymnastics events.) For karate, visitors may only join 10 of the 15 scheduled events. (The Philippines has reigning World Games champion Junna Tsukii and a very strong karatedo team.) In e-sports, only seven of 10 available slots are set aside for opposing teams. (The Philippines has the two best teams in the world.) It’s easy to think that the country has been targeted, handcuffed by unreasonable restrictions.

Aside from excluding other sports they are weak in like bodybuilding, they have curiously merged muay thai with Kun Khmer, another Cambodian national martial art. What does this mean? It means that the International Federation of Muay Thai Associations (IFMA) will not be running the events involving its member athletes. A local Kun Khmer association in Cambodia will. Usually, it is the international federation’s local affiliate that conducts events in SEA Games, Asian Games and so on. So it is highly unlikely that the IFMA will allow this. Now, it is possible that the Philippines, which won five golds in muay thai in the last two SEA Games, might not be allowed to participate in the sport.

Most egregious of all, the organizers have made available at least 27 golds for their own local martial arts. These are sports that none of the other ASEAN countries practice on a large scale, if at all, thereby guaranteeing a monopoly of wins for the hosts. This happened likely in 2011, when Indonesia ramrodded their rough indigenous combat sport tarung derajat into the SEA Games in less than six months. It is practiced by high military officers and many important people in that country. The result was, of course, an overwhelming win for them in that sport. Although arnis is included in the SEA Games only when the Philippines hosts, you can’t say it’s a monopoly since other ASEAN countries also practice it.

We’ve already seen firsthand all the horror stories regarding many countries manipulating rules and schedules when they host the SEA Games, even “allocating” gold medals in advance. They even split events up to win more golds. Thailand did this with dancesport in 2007, a two-gold event in the Philippines two years earlier (one for Latin and one for standard, which are each five-dance disciplines). The Thais dedicated 10 golds or one per dance. Often, Philippine basketball teams are made to play consecutive games against their toughest opposition less than 24 hours apart. But this is a whole new level, giving everyone else less chances to win, and announcing it in advance. The fix is in. Live with it.