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PROLINKer
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« on: April 19, 2008, 03:21:22 PM » |
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Mitigating Greed : Help Save the Breed
Johnny Filart
If I don’t like how a club is run, what are my options? I get out of the club. I file a specific complain and hope the Board Members give their time of day addressing my complain. I run for Board Member in the next election. Or like most moneyed people, I would establish a new club.
In the Filipino culture of crab mentality, this kind of divisiveness is pervasive and detrimental to the progress of our people as a whole. And yet despite so many people pointing out his disease, this character flaw or this disconnect as a nation, today we see disturbing events showcasing individual greed and personal selfishness that you wonder, “ how much money do these people really want to have in order to be satisfied ?”
One such event unfolding very rapidly is the purported set-up of another dog club to compete with the Philippine Canine Club. Throughout its more than forty years of existence, the PCCI is witness to several opposition groups forming to compete in its field of dog registration and regulation of the breeding practices of dog owners.
It is well known that the board four years ago, bought a show site property in Marikina which cost the Club several millions. Then as if on cue the succeeding board went about building a P70Million plus edifice that up to today remains mainly as a monument to those free and wild spending days of the club. In view of the clean-up being instituted by the duly elected board starting two years ago, the board members tried several times and failed to regain back their board seats via a proxy fight.
Needless to say, the same set of rules that have been used and abused to maintain their lock hold on the board directorships were the very same set of rules being use on them to cleanup the club and resuscitate it back to life. To day, the financial health is back and the club’s networth is positive. Versus the obligations and the negative networth they left behind four years ago. However, what is the main objective of the old board coming back to the club besides the money, is the manipulations and machinations of rules that insure that their dogs keep winning in the show ring:
a) They would choose foreign judges and with no cap on the number of times these judges can come to the Philippines and judge, would show their dogs only when their favorite judges are in town. This practice was thus corrected by capping the limit to only one time every six months per judge.
b) The wining and dining of foreign judges to no end before and after each show, to include sadly, the dogs’ handlers in order for the judges not to forget the entries they have to choose.
c) Dog switching is a common complaint in the show ring. I use to just shrug off these complaints as sour grapping, only later did I realize the extent to which commercial breeders would go to win. No wonder, there are a number of times the pedigrees abound in glowing red marks ( the sign of champions) and yet the dog itself looks like…….. “ a dog”.
Seriously, this has to stop. And the time to act is now. When you see a new dog club come up, ask yourselves:
- Why now, after forty-five years?
- Why now, after being caught monopolizing the micro-chipping of dogs and awarding the contract to ONE sole supplier?
- What will a new club with old board members do for the dog world that cannot be done by PCCI?
- Even with reduce registration rates, how acceptable is another club’s pedigree be? Specially, when we have our nightmare from Taiwanese and Thailand born dogs whose registration and pedigrees almost always cause concern.
- Is this another crab mentality of Filipinos? Or is it even GRAB mentality when Millions are at stake?
I remember way back in 2002, when I founded the Guinea Pig Federation of the Philippines. Another group, sadly having the same members as this new dog club, tried their level best to pre-empt our club to the “millions” in registration and show fees that was supposed to be earned. Well, history showed Filipinos are intelligent. They can smell a money making scam a mile a way. I hope they will do the same when this new club suddenly rears its head in the dog scene.
Haven’t we all learn that this is a hobby and like marriage you stick to it for better or for worse? Greed seems to come out in all types of forms. Crusading individuals who purportedly knows how to right the wrongs and correct the ills of a club which drowned in its own success.
I am beginning to believe these people that throw money as well as their weight around do not really mean good for other people. Instead, rather than working out their difference, would resort to extreme measures to get back in power. This delusion of grandeur that they are God’s gift to the dog world is very dangerous. To me the sign of a good leader is one that is always ready to give up the authority to give way to better management. But if you see individuals rape your club’s cash, throw mud at their opponent as if their life depended on it, risk the opinion of the masses that they are really in to win no matter how dirty the game is, then they are not true leaders and will only cause further desecration of good and propagation of greed and evil.
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