Amendments to limit leadership in sports association may be tabled soon

The Youth and Sports Ministry is updating the proposed amendments to the Sports Development Act 1997 which will probably contain a provision to limit the tenure of leadership in sports associations, the Dewan Rakyat was told today.

Its minister Khairy Jamaluddin said, however, the proposal was still at the discussion stage before being decided and expected to be tabled in the next Dewan Rakyat sitting.

"We are refining the proposal because for big sports associations, there will be many candidates vying to lead. But for small and not very popular sports, probably no one wants to be the president and that is why there is a president for life or someone holding the position for a long time," he said when replying to a question from Datuk Abd Aziz Sheikh Fadzir (BN-Kulim Bandar Baru).

Abd Aziz had wanted to know whether the ministry had a political will to address management problems faced by sports associations that had affected the country's sports development.

Khairy, who is also Rembau MP, said the amendment was also seen as one of the mechanisms to rejuvenate sports associations, especially at leadership and management levels.

"If there is a rejuvenation, they (leaders of sports associations) will not hold the positions for a long time and they will think about performances and improvements of the sport in particular," he said.

Earlier, when replying to a question from G. Manivannan (PKR-Kapar) who had wanted to know the government's measures to rectify the national contingent's failure at the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games, Khairy said the ministry had appointed five experts in international sports transformation to audit the management of high performance sports in the country.

He said the results of the audit report outlined three major weaknesses, namely no common ground in terms of sporting aspirations set to be achieved among stakeholders.

"Secondly, there is no clear accountability for any issues related to sports and the thirdly the stakeholders are reluctant to change, which prevented any good process to be implemented," he said.

Khairy added that the ministry had taken drastic measures, including establishing a task force to formulate a new sports model blueprint.