Champions Youth Cup - Datuk Minister, What Are You Thinking?
POSTED ON MAY 26TH, 2008 | CATEGORIZED AS POLITIK, YOUTH AND SPORTS | TAGGED AS AZALINA OTHMAN, CHAMPIONS YOUTH CUP, DATUK ISMAIL SABRI, FAM
Arrgghhh…
I received a call from a senior official in the Ministry of Youth and Sports this afternoon confirming that the Champions Youth Cup (CYC) has been called off by the Ministry.
FAM on 24th of May through his Highness the Sultan of Pahang has refused to sanction the game and since then, we’ve been waiting for the Ministry to issue an official stance. We were expecting the Minister to convince FAM to change their mind or at least to honour their contractual obligation to CYC to host the game.
Yes, contractual obligation! When the free-spending Azalina was Youth & Sports Minister, Najib and her bid , for the game to be hosted in Malaysia and they won the bid for three years - 2007, 2008 & 2009. And true to her spending style, the then Minister signed a contract with CYC paying them RM17000000.00 every year for the three years to organize the games. Yup, 17 million ringgit of the Rakyat’s monies.
And last year was a boo-boo…the turnout was bad due to last minute promotions and bad publicity strategy. Some host states spent more than RM200k without any visible return (not even a crowd at the stadium).
But this year, everyone vow to do it differently. When Penang was invited to host the quarter finals, we were all very excited. We wanted to make this the most changgih-est sporting event in the state this year. CYC had improved their promotional and publicity strategy, we have been working closely with the appointed media and marketing teams. We’ve even got a fully sponsored official hotel which will cover the majority of the cost!!! We all in the working committee have been working hard to secure the sponsors and arranged the roadshows and logistics and everything.
Then FAM throw a tantrum (coz they were not informed earlier they said). My source told me KJ who is the FAM Deputy Prez is behind the whole thing. He was reported in the press to have said (and I paraphrase): Don’t play our @$$ - now you know who we are.
Then today, the Ministry pulled out as well. Hey, but you were the guys that signed the contract! So we are still paying RM17mil this year and next year (that’s a total of RM34mil for you maths-retard out there) to CYC and yet not do anything. puit!!
The way to right a wrong is not to do a worse wrong Datuk Ismail Sabri. What’s on your mind? RM17mil going down the drain this year?
I hope we’ll have a u-turn this two days. I hope someone will raise this in Parliament (I have text-ed one of the MPs today). My source at the Ministry said nothing is “official” yet (yeah right, and the Minister already spoke at a PC this afternoon) but told me this looks like the end of it. I am curious to see the Minister’s statement which I could not find on the web yet.
And the curious thing is…FAM which has all this while refused to commit (they also didn’t attend the team draw on 29 April in KL) has a page dedicated to CYC 2008 under their International Competitions page. What the heck is happening?
The page is still there as off the writing of this entry…
Sports and politics…they are an idiotic couple!
