THERE were rumors, some said nasty, swirling around when Phoenix joined the PBA in the 2015-16 season, the rumors dealing mostly with how long the new team would last in the pro league. But those rumors were quickly put to rest when the Fuel Masters showed they were here to stay, gamely battling on with rosters hastily formed from discards, free agents, and rookies that were passed over by the other teams.
In 12 conferences so far, the Fuel Masters have not finished lower than 11th. Their best finish so far was third, twice, the last coming last year when the league played in a bubble in Clark. They finished with an 11-6 record in the Philippine Cup, behind eventual runner-up Tropang Giga and champion Barangay Ginebra.
The Fuel Masters are, of course, owned by Davao-based businessman Dennis Uy, whose meteoric rise in the world of business is nothing short of phenomenal.
Just for kicks, I googled Dennis Uy and this came up: “Udenna Corp. posted a net profit of P3.39 billion in 2019 driven by the robust performance of its property development business. In a statement Monday, the holding company of businessman Dennis A. Uy said it reached record high revenues of P110.67 billion last year, higher by 17% from the previous year.”
Wow! For a company founded in March 2002, that was quite a big leap!
Another item that popped up piqued my interest, a very interesting piece about Uy’s latest business venture, Dito Telecommunity. For those who have been living in caves these past years, Dito is a consortium of Uy’s Udenna Corp. (through its subsidiary Dito Holdings Corp., and Chinese state-owned China Telecomunications Corp., a parent company of China Telecom.
The piece was datelined Canberra, with Queensland Sen. James McGrath warning that China was using Communist Party-controlled owned instrumentalities such as China Telecom and Dito Telecommunity as “Trojan Horses” to infiltrate the infrastructure of smaller nations in the Indo-China region.
McGrath was particularly concerned about China Telecom’s 40 percent share in Dito Telecommunity.
“Many are concerned that Dito Telecommunity is a Trojan horse for spying, including on the armed forces of the Philippines and its allies the United States and Australia,” the reported quoted McGrath as saying: “When we consider how many Australian companies house parts of their businesses in the Philippines, such as call centers, this should ring alarm bells with cybersecurity experts.
“We must be awake to the Philippines being one of the first dominoes at risk of falling to the nefarious influence of that evil regime in China,” said McGrath, pointing out that Asia-Pacific consulting firm Creator Tech recently released a study into the new telecommunications operator that raised serious concerns about China’s entry into the Philippines telecommunications industry and its control of the national power grid in that country.
“While China has continued with its wolf warrior diplomacy and while territorial concerns continue to be raised, including in seas off Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, the Chinese Communist Party government and its military arm have been quietly making strategic acquisitions of another kind,” he said.
This, of course, refers to China’s incursions in the country’s exclusive economic zone in the West Philippine Sea and I immediately recalled Sen. Risa Hontiveros recently renewing calls for the National Security Council to conduct a security audit on Dito, pointing out that the US has already blacklisted Chinese firms, including China Telecom, due to suspicions that they supply or support China’s military and security apparatus.
Whew! As they say in the vernacular, ang bigat!
But back to Uy. He added P5 million to the kitty of weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, who won the country’s breakthrough gold medal in the recent Tokyo Olympics. Diaz also got a brand-new car from Ayala Corporation and she will be driving that with unlimited fuel coming from Phoenix.
But now, some quarters are asking: Why didn’t the businessman from Davao City add to the incentives going to Nesthy Petecio, Carlo Paalam and Eumir Marcial?
As some wag told me: Another P3 million for a silver medal and P1 million for a bronze medal will not even be a drop in the bucket.
Well, that will have to be answered by Mr. Uy himself.
We sportswriters, because we know (or pretend to know) the law of averages, like surprises, like when Gilas Pilipinas stunned South Korea in 2013 and qualified for the World Cup in 2014.
But a Trojan horse in our midst? Yes, we like surprises, but not like this.
