VSN2030 – the need to climb and conquer proverbial mountains

PRIME Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s stint as the nation’s 15th Youth and Sports Minister from March 2008 to April 2009 was too brief for him to be able to create a strong legacy.

But uneventful it was not. The Bera Member of Parliament spent most of the time fire-fighting and providing solutions to a sports fraternity plagued by a variety of issues – ranging from performance to governance.

A week into his appointment then, Ismail Sabri struck a chord with the average Joe. In his first official visit to the National Sports Council (NSC) and National Sports Institute (NSI), he spoke about key performance indicators (KPI) to measure the whole structure of sports right down to the district.

Before Facebook, Twitter and Instagram were widely used, he wanted blogs as a medium to interact with the youth.

Ismail Sabri charmed his way into the hearts of the fraternity, preferring the consensual group decision-making process in order to stamp his own mark.

Accompanied by the senior officers, he later enjoyed lunch at the athletes’ cafeteria, sharing a table with tenpin bowler Shalin Zulkifli, lawn bowler Safuan Said and hurdler Noraseela Mohd Khalid.

Then he went into action. Less than a month into his appointment, Ismail Sabri put a stop to the proposal of turning the Tun Abdul Razak Research Centre (TARRC), a place where Malaysians traditionally converge to celebrate Malaysia Day in the outskirts of London, into a high-performance training centre for the nation’s elite athletes.

The decision signalled an end to the controversy and debate that had taken place – from the august house of the parliament to the mamak stalls around Kuala Lumpur – ever since it was revealed by a Singapore newspaper that it would cost Malaysia a bomb to establish a full-scale centre in Hertfordshire.

Then, Ismail Sabri again showed political will to cancel the Champions Youth Cup (CYC), an expensive yearly affair involving RM17mil per annum for the event organiser to bring together youth teams from Europe to compete in Malaysia.

Finally, it was Ismail Sabri who made the call for the National Sports Policy launched in 1988 to be given a new lease of life.

In the National Sports Convention held not long after the Beijing Olympics, he provided some pointers in his speech, offering remedial measures to cure our ills.

Fourteen years on, most of Ismail Sabri’s concerns seem to have been compiled into a 116-page policy document called the National Sports Vision 2030, or VSN2030 for short.

Some see VSN2030 as a reboot to the existing system. Some have described it as an action plan which reflects the collective aspiration of Malaysians in mapping a new direction.

Initiated by former Sports Minister, Datuk Seri Reezal Merican Naina Merican, the finishing touches were put by his successor Datuk Seri Ahmad Faizal Azumu for Ismail Sabri to launch in conjunction with Hari Sukan Negara three weeks ago.

The impressive document outlines seven challenges in mapping out VSN2030, namely how does the community adapt to sports under the new norms, poor governance in high performance sports, lack of one-stop centres for data in order to create data-driven initiatives, the over-reliance on government intervention in terms of expertise, funding and infrastructure, lack of uniformed guidelines on usage of facilities, lack of co-operation and synergy between stakeholders and the gap in terms of fitness among communities.

In short, we need to move mountains.

Datuk Dr Ramlan Abdul Aziz, who was among the officers accompanying Ismail Sabri at NSC 14 years ago, succinctly put it on his Twitter account in response to VSN2030.

“There has always been vision, however murky, quirky or dorky some might contend but the acid test is always on the execution and the resolve to see through it to fruition.”

This writer remains a sceptic.