Prime Minister Ismail Sabri should do something good for a change by stepping in and reversing the two-year ban imposed on Malaysia’s top badminton male player Lee Zii Jia and female badminton player Goh Jin Wei from international competition by the Badminton Association of Malaysia (BAM). Such a ban has drawn widespread international condemnation from top foreign badminton players throughout the world with descriptions of “outright disaster”, “wrong” and “crazy”.
Unless this ban is reversed immediately, this will discourage youths from excelling in sports. Malaysia’s hopes of Olympic glory and winning our first gold medal in our history will remain a distant dream. Such poor treatment of our top athletes follows the “forced” retirement of Malaysia women’s diving world champion Cheong Jun Hoong after her contract as a full-time athlete with the National Sports Council(NSC) was not renewed. Also Malaysia’s top female squash player Low Wee Wern was dropped from the Podium Programme by the NSC whilst recovering from injury.
Again, Malaysia is becoming an international outlier for brutal treatment of our top talents by irresponsibly and cruelly taking away their most important commodity – time to compete when they are at their prime of their careers. Malaysia is also an international outlier where the lawman becomes an outlaw by protecting top graft-buster Azam Baki unexplained wealth by lying about his ownership and trading of shares amounting to millions of ringgit.
There is nothing wrong in our sports athletes wanting to follow their own path, choose their own coaches or their own tournament schedule and sponsorship deals to sustain their success as a professional player. If BAM wants to get back their investment in nurturing successful players, then they can work out a reasonable deal either in compensation or asking them to help train young players.
The failure of the Youth and Sports Minister Ahmad Faizal bin Azumu to protect our sports athletes only highlights the incompetence of the government that sharply contrasts with the success of the Singapore government in enticing top Malaysian players to play for them. The newly crowned Singapore badminton world champion Loh Kean Yew, was originally from Penang, but was lost to our neighbouring country because the Federal government at that time failed to appreciate and value our sports talents. If Ahmad cannot do his job well, it is better for him to resign than sacrifice our athletes, who unlike Ahmad, are working hard to gain glory for the country.