Commonwealth Games has outlived shelf life

 

If Malaysia wants to do the Commonwealth Games any favours, we should move a motion to have it scrapped, if not downsized, but certainly not host it.

One has to be blind not to see that the Games have outlived their shelf life, and are no longer a priority competition for top athletes. The fact that cities are no longer queueing up to host them should be an indication that they have become a financial bane, not a boon.

Ask Birmingham, the host city for the 2022 Games, which reportedly went bankrupt, with costs that reached RM4.67 billion.

Victoria, which saw the signs, albeit a little late, was happy to pay USD$243 million (RM1.43 billion) to bail out as hosts in midstream. They realised that the Games wasn’t worth its value in money, especially since there was a cost blowout from USD$2.6 billion to USD$7 billion.

The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) needed a host badly, and dangled RM600 million before Malaysia, hoping that the puny offer would entice our erudite sports administrators to lap it up.

But with a colossal national debt of RM1.5 trillion swinging around our necks like an executioner’s axe, only a daredevil politician, or a raving lunatic will want besieged Malaysia to host the 2026 Games.

The Cabinet will decide this week, and the rationale – if we can call it that – provided by the proponents, is that with the existing state of the art facilities in good form, organisers would be able to work within the RM600 million offering.

I will believe that when hell freezes over, when the Red Devils win the EPL this season, and when Malaysia makes it to the FIFA 2026 World Cup finals. For, given the talents of some Malaysians in the art of hidden costs, it will cost us at least RM2.5 billion to put this act together within a period of two years.

But perhaps, there’s a possibility that Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim could be persuaded by his “whisperers” to accept CGF’s offer, if only to sweeten the bitter taste of the shocking events in his life, during the period of the KL 1998 Games from Sept 11-21.

On Sept 2, 1998, just nine days before the Games began, Anwar was sacked as deputy prime minister and from the Cabinet by then PM, Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Then on Sept 20, just a day before the closing ceremony, Anwar was arrested and thrown into jail without trial.

These may be compelling personal reasons for Anwar to consider accepting the CGF offer, to change that narrative, and for the feel-good factor of hosting the Games a year before the next general election.

Well, Sir, nothing can be further from the truth – not when millions are jobless and miserable, homeless and sick, and hungry and undernourished.

With the cost of living escalating by the month, the last thing on the minds of the millions of Malaysians – especially those barely surviving in the B40 category – is for the government they voted for, to prioritise the hosting of an inconsequential Games over their livelihoods.

But should the Cabinet allow it, it should be on one condition – that not a single sen of taxpayers’ money is used. Which means, apart from the government’s blessings, there should be no public funding.

Taxpayers have suffered enough for the sins of their leaders. The price they are still paying weighs heavily on their already bent backs.

But if the proponents of the Games want it that much, give them to a corporate entity, like Sukom Ninety Eight Berhad in 1998, to organise the Games with their own funding.

Speaking of Sukom Ninety Eight Berhad, run by retired general Hashim Ali, brother-in-law of Mahathir, it was a total financial failure. And what’s more embarrassing to the nation, is that until today, its accounts haven’t been closed. Talk about hidden costs.

There are really more reasons for us to decline the hosting job than there are to accept it. Malaysia is not ready to host an event like this, and it will be a logistics nightmare to attempt to put it together in such a short period of time.

And do these people who want this hosting job believe that we have the athletes to put on a good showing in the 2026 Games?

It was different in 1998 when we still had some athletes of calibre, with badminton giving us three gold medals, bowling two, and one each in boxing, athletics, gymnastics, weightlifting and shooting.

But now, we aren’t even sure of badminton anymore, what with the rise of India as a new power. And what we don’t want to see is a massacre of Malaysian sport in our own backyard.

More importantly, we don’t want to see taxpayers’ money again being abused to enrich those who see hosting the Games as a business opportunity to line their own pockets and further impoverish the burdened. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.