Less Govt, more people in sports

Balance must be struck for society to claim a piece of sporting success

By Jeremy Au Yong, The Straits Times, 11 Aug 2012

ONE wonders what Feng Tianwei must make of Lee Chong Wei.

By all accounts, the Singaporean paddler - just like the Malaysian shuttler - has had a successful outing at the Olympics. She won two bronze medals while he won a silver.

Yet, the reactions at home to their respective achievements could not have been more different.

The Malaysian has been celebrated as a national hero. In fact, so great has the enthusiasm been that many in Singapore have caught the Lee Chong Wei fever.

He was mobbed at the airport when he returned from London and there is a YouTube video making the rounds thanking him for uniting the nation at a time of polarising electoral politics.

Feng, on the other hand, seems to have had the opposite effect. She seems to have divided opinions sharply. Supporters praise her for the way she gave her all for the country and managed to raise Singapore's flag at the Olympic Games.

Those in the opposing camp are angry, not at Feng herself, but over what they think she stands for. This group considers the medal hollow, contending that she is not a true-blue Singaporean.

Much has been said about the citizenship issue and Foreign Sports Talent Scheme.

But what is significant is that the divide appears to go beyond the issues of sports, patriotism and citizenship. Politics and the perceptions of the Government seem to have been entangled in the debate.

It may not be a perfect overlap but there does appear to be a group for whom our table tennis players are akin to People's Action Party (PAP) representatives - their success or failure is a reflection of how well the Government is itself perceived.

This correlation must be unique to Singapore. Support for the government in Malaysia does not appear to be linked to happiness over Lee's silver.

And therein lies one big part of the reason why disagreement over foreign sports stars has been intractable for more than a decade.

Sports ambitions in Singapore appear to be very much a Government-led initiative, with the Government doing much of the heavy lifting. This is not to detract from the thousands of volunteers who while away years promoting the different sports. But the reality is that the Government's fingerprints are all over Singapore sports.

Sports associations tend to be headed by MPs. And this means a politician is very much part of the narrative of that sport.

They are shown explaining and apologising when the team does not do well and celebrating when it succeeds. They are also invariably interviewed after every major game.

It is one thing to have politicians simply show up at a stadium to support the team, but it is something else when a politician takes responsibility for it.

The Government can and does bring a lot of value to sports - helping fund sports programmes and building sports facilities - but it may want to think about whether it is in the country's best interests to have ministers or MPs run the sports teams directly.

While it is true that oversight must be exercised if the Government is spending millions of dollars on sports, the question to be asked is whether direct representation in sports bodies is the best way to do it.

More worryingly, mixing politics with sports can risk eroding one of sport's key benefits - its ability to unite.

The Government's overwhelming presence can also have the effect of making corporates and other potential stakeholders hang back.

Here again, there is a sharp contrast between Lee and those in Team Singapore.

If he had won the gold, he would have received RM1 million (S$400,000) from the government, RM1 million from a furniture company and a 12.5kg gold bar from a gold mine owner. On top of that, Baskin-Robbins had said it would offer free ice cream at all its Malaysian outlets. Appreciating his achievement was thus not just a government matter but also something that involved the society at large.

All Team Singapore's rewards would come from the Government. No local company appears to have stepped up to offer similar rewards to Feng or even any of the local-born athletes.

Yet we already know that Singaporeans can take the initiative even if it seems that the Government already has all the bases covered. This has been the year of the unofficial National Day music video. There have also been numerous unsanctioned videos making the rounds on the Internet.

Three of note are Project "We Are Singapore", a song titled "I Still Love You" and the third, a Mentos advertisement called "National Night". Perhaps, unsurprisingly, all of them have been getting more accolades than the official video.

The point is that even though it is so easy to look upon National Day celebrations as another Government project - it does run the whole thing - Singaporeans stepped up to claim a piece of it for themselves. And the country and National Day celebrations are richer for it.

We now just need to reproduce that spirit in sports.

To achieve that, both politicians and ordinary Singaporeans need to strike the right balance - one that involves the Government doing less and the people doing more.