AC VOICE THEIR FRUSTRATION WITH OCM
Athletes’ Commission disappointed after their set-up is not approved
THE Athletes’ Commission (AC), a body that represent the interests of the country’s national athletes, are up in arms with the Olympic Council of Malaysia (OCM)’s executive board.
Headed by former national hurdler Noraseela Mohd Khalid, the AC have written to the OCM to express their dissatisfaction and dismay.
The letter was jointly signed by Noraseela (athletics), Shalin Zulkifli (bowling), Tunku Nazroff Tunku Mokhsin (equestrian), May Tan (swimming), Yap Khim Wen (taekwondo), Loh Jack Chang (wushu), Azlan Misron (hockey) and Fairul Izwan Abd Muin (lawn bowls).
Frustrated with the OCM for making life hard for them, the AC hope the former will be more transparent in their decisions and act in accordance with the International Olympic Council’s guidelines.
The AC stated in their letter they had complied with OCM’s directives and requirements, including holding elections but still failed to get approval from the executive board.
The group of former national athletes claimed they were surprised that the OCM did not want to recognise the AC’s set-up despite OCM secretary general Datuk Nazifuddin Najib, as adviser, endorsed the election process and its results.
The AC said due to these difficulties, they feel disenchanted with the OCM executive board for not being upfront with them the reasons for their decision and for not following appropriate procedures.
When contacted by NST Sport, Nazifuddin Najib said OCM have to take steps to ensure the “new AC” are more inclusive and provide a better representation of
Malaysian sports as well as the country’s current generation of athletes.
“Previously, there were only sevens sports represented in AC from 56 sports (affiliated to OCM), so this number is very low.
“If possible we want all 56 sports to be represented and give the whole picture of what is happening in Malaysian sports.
“We gave a chance to them (previous AC leadership) to get more sports involved but there was not much improvement and most of them were the same faces.”
The OCM’s stand is that they were not satisfied with the representation of sports in AC and the composition of the members.
Also feeling that the AC members were not properly elected, OCM decided to suspend and restructure the former.
“There were also some issues with the programmes conducted (by AC) which is why we temporarily halted it. It was not an official suspension, we just stopped it for a while to take a look at the criteria again.
“One issue was that the athletes were not nominated by their NSAs but by fellow athletes. A number of them had also retired from competitive sports for too long.
“AC need athletes who are either still competing or at least have still been competing in recent editions of (multi-sport) games. The reason is so that they will understand what issues the current athletes are facing.
“We consulted IOC regarding this restructuring and they are aware of what we are doing. We revamped our criteria and came out with a new guideline for AC.
“Recently, we sent out new forms to the NSAs and 24 sports responded and we now have 48 athletes — 24 men and 24 women — in AC. This is a positive step for us.”