TWO days before the 30th Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) even officially opened, both the social and traditional media in this country are buried eyeballs-deep in sensational stories — some true and some not — of unfinished or unsuitable venues, poor service to Filipino and visiting athletes, excessive expenditures and a multitude of other breakdowns that threaten to derail our hosting of the Games and ruin the country’s image.

Without diminishing the importance of performance and accountability, we believe cooler heads should prevail at this point, and that the country should pull together to make the SEA Games as successful as possible.