What do you do if you want to popularize a martial art? Well, one way to go about it is to declare it the national sport of your country. And that's exactly what Senate Majority Floor Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri helped secure by championing the recently signed Republic Act (RA) 9850 on December 11, which declared Arnis as the national martial art and sport of the Philippines.
"It's sad that arnis is more important and more popular abroad than inside the Philippines. They have national and international competitions," Zubiri said in an article at BusinessMirror.com. But with arnis's new status, Zubiri, a former world champion in the sport, hopes that it will become just as important to Filipinos as it is to the rest of the world.
But there's more to his sponsorship of the law than just that. "The main reason I sponsored the law is to unify all styles of arnis-kami eskrima under the Filipino Martial Arts, or FMA," said Zubiri. In other words, the FMA will oversee the development of arnis and other indigenous forms of martial arts in the hopes that it will lead to positive developments.
Nice effort by the Senator.
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