Just as the Malaysian Chinese Associations internecine feud headed for a timeout, another soap opera wafted in to hog the headlines — this one on the back pages. A long-simmering dispute between the National Sports Council (NSC) and the Malaysian Amateur Athletic Union (MAAU) reached the stage where the latters fate hinged on a decision by the Sports Commissioner.

He was set to use powers conferred by the Sports Development Act to de-register what is possibly the oldest sports body in the country.

The controversy generated billows from what seemed like a little fire. It appeared the MAAU were derelict in obtaining only eight of the targeted 16 gold medals in the 2001 SEA Games; and that MAAU officials were overly prone to politicking and were neglecting their homework. The NSC viewed these shortcomings as serious enough to require that the athletics body be overhauled or, failing that, de-registered.

Observers are surprised the NSC has pushed for action as punitive as de-registration. Few people would be bold enough to say that the MAAU is a slickly run body, good at finding, nurturing and bringing to maturity the countrys athletic talent. But fewer still would argue that they have been flagrantly dysfunctional.

Punitive scrutiny

Bagging only half the gold medals the MAAU said it would win at the SEA Games is not such a glaring debit when this is set against sports that are supposed to be our forte - silat and takraw. Malaysian performers were bested in these disciplines by unheralded Vietnam and Thailand.

In the last two SEA Games, Vietnam have overshadowed us at silat, a sport that must have been as new to them as lawn bowls is to us. In takraw, Thailand have climbed to an ascendancy over Malaysia that its football team, once on a par with us, has established over us a superiority that was embarrassingly and emphatically rubbed into Malaysia when the Thais beat us 8-1 in an Under-20 soccer competition in Bangkok earlier this month.

So why did the NSC pick the MAAU for special — and punitive — scrutiny?

Last January the NSC marked its 20th anniversary as an agency separate from the Youth and Sports Ministry. In this 20-year period it has established itself as the funding agency for development programmes of national associations, the local sporting version of the IMF. Perhaps inevitably, with the power to fund came the desire to control.

In the last 10 years, the NSC has swarmed with newly graduated officers who think that a degree in sports science arms them with the credentials to tell national associations how to produce high-performance athletes.

Also, in the last five years, the NSC has attempted but failed to control the national bodies for bowling, shooting and hockey. They did not suffer rebuffs sportingly. Indeed, the slight felt was sometimes assuaged by the NSCs ability to influence more pliable associations into voting to defeat officials from recalcitrant associations who vied for positions in corporate bodies like the Olympic Council of Malaysia.

Abrasive talk

These manoeuvres made the NSC a player in the sports politics in which national associations are embroiled. Not surprisingly, criticism has mounted in recent years over alleged intrusiveness by the NSC.

In the last year or so, attempts by the NSC to bring a recalcitrant MAAU to heel have failed, producing chagrin in the former and renewed determination to resist by the latter.

The racial composition of the MAAU council would suggest that it is one of those bodies exempt from the social engineering process much of Malaysian society has undergone in the last 31 years.

The 15-member council nearly inverts the proportions of various races found in the peninsula. Adding insult to injury was abrasive talk from MAAU council members in meetings with NSC officers. ("Just because Im of this race doesnt mean I have to pick someone of like race for the team," a MAAU official told a particularly keen social engineer from the NSC.)

A further irritant to the sensibility of social engineers in the NSC is that though the MAAU is presided over by middle-echelon politicians from the countrys dominant political party, the president finds it hard to get his way in the council. This can be galling to enthusiasts of the dominant race theory.

Not only in its composition and comportment are the MAAU a provocation to the NSC, the tardy paperwork of some office-bearers invites reformist zeal. Thus a showdown, long in the making, moved swiftly to confrontation, following last Septembers SEA Games where athletics obtained only half the targeted gold medals, giving detractors in the NSC a pretext for action.

Futile charade

The NSC convened a special task force to scrutinise the MAAU and recommend a plan of action. Its not clear what the task force actually proposed but soon enough the Sports Commissioner — a role created by a poorly conceived Sports Development Act, itself a piece of legislation crafted by the NSC — issued an ultimatum to MAAU: either revamp its council or be de-registered.

It was a measure of the dearth of experience of the NSC that they overlooked the possible repercussions from the MAAUs international allies, the International Amateur Athletic Federation and the Asian AAA.

National sports bodies, under the rules of the Olympic charter, enjoy autonomy from government interference. An arbitrary move by a government body to de-register them would invite a ban on the countrys athletes in competitions held under the auspices of the international parent body.

This possible ban was something the NSC, in its zeal to bring a recalcitrant body to heel, had overlooked. Scrambling to save face, the NSC gave the MAAU a way out: Show us a development plan from 2002 until 2010 or else! The MAAU quickly drew up a plan and duly submitted it by the deadline.

The entire episode was a charade that could not deceive observers with knowledge of the goings-on behind the published news. Whether it would have awakened the principal players and operatives to awareness of the limits of their power is not certain.

Given Malaysian sports propensity to feuds and follies, further editions in the series of NSC versus another recalcitrant sports body can be expected soon.

J Terence Netto is a journalist of nearly 30 years experience consisting of spells spent in the mainstream papers interspersed with bouts of freelancing. All that time he found that the main attraction in journalism is that it puts you in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.