Defiant Sports Minister Snubbed PM?

Azalina Othman Said, Minister of Youth and Sports, dismissed those who objected to the proposed sports centre at the Tun Abdul Razak Research Centre (TARRC) in Brickendonbury in England. She is insistent that the centre would be needed to mould Malaysian sportsmen to become high achievers.

She said the Finance Ministry, not the public, has the last say on the matter as it is a government project.

PM Abdullah Badawi had said last Wednesday that the British authorities would not allow additional buildings to be built at the TARRC because it was gazetted as a heritage site.

But despite the PM’s diplomatic hint to her, a defiant Azalina declared that the National Sports Council would meet the Malaysian Rubber Board next week to discuss the possibility of sharing the TARRC facility. She will then present the outcome of that meeting to the cabinet committee on sports in September.

There are a number of issues with her obdurate stand:

(1) By asserting that “the Finance Ministry had the last say on the matter as it is a government project”, she has virtually told the public to bugger off, as (the elected ministers forming) the government needn’t be answerable to the feelings of the public.

(2) At the same time, she has shifted the responsibility to the Finance Ministry as if she as Sports Minister now doesn’t need to be accountable for her proposal.

(3) Despite the PM hinting in his usual Fu Mountain style politeness, that the project wouldn’t be able to go through because of the British, she has stubbornly ignored his advice by saying she would meet the Malaysian Rubber Board next week to discuss the possibility of sharing the TARRC facility with the rubber people.

(4) When she talks about ‘sharing the TARRC’facility', I would make an intelligent guess-timate that she was merely talking about the administrative aspects of the proposed sports centre. Where then would be the actual facilities for training, if the British won't permit developments on a heritage site?

We see here three typical models of ministerial behaviour:

(1) Ministers proposing illogical inane irrelevant and bloody expensive proposals that won’t benefit the general public, and at a time when the government has been telling people to tighten their belts. Because those ministers haven’t been fully transparent and accountable in the past, au contraire very arrogantly dismissive of public expressions of concerns, we tend to harbour suspicions about their motives, and thus are unsympathetic to their grandiose and generally non-beneficial schemes.

(2) Obdurate and senseless defiance out of foolish pride, etc by a minister because the public (and opposition parties) had made mince meat out of her idiotic proposal.

(3) And sadly but most importantly the PM has been too wimpish, indulging in traditional Malay old court type oblique language which his Sports Minister obviously couldn't read. That’s the problem with AAB’s public image, and it’s little wonder that people believe in the allegations his son-in-law and cronies have been running his office for him.