Why do we have Associations at all?

Have you ever thought of this? Why not just have the private academies run the show in chess? Let's examine this a little today.

Could it be that impartiality is an important aspect for the development of any sport? Private academies could be partial. Sports is competitive or supposed to be competitive to compel the development of excellence.

And so man in his wisdom decided to develop an organisation called Associations with a Constitution and vested powers to order the situation so that the competitive spirit could be fostered. And the Associations do this by being impartial.

And so the private Academies compete. The players compete for us to achieve that excellence.

But something has gone really wrong with this concept in our chess scene here. Here it seems that the impartiality has been lost. Certain people seem to be able to do whatever they want and the Associations seems to have lost the ability to act impartially.

And so this institution has collapsed in it's ability to function as it was originally supposed to function.

I often suspect that our sports associations mirror the way our government works. However I think we need to make a distinction. The general wisdom is that sports should be separate from politics. Separate from the influence of big business. The bigger picture of politics in government is beyond the scope of this piece but I think we can see that chess cannot develop under the conditions we are in at the moment.

I think it would be good if the Council of MCF sits down and reflect on this. Match fixing is a big problem and we need our officials to very very very aware of their responsibility in this matter.

Let me use an analogy here. In an examination like SPM for instance, we bring in outside invigilators. Their job is to ensure that there is no cheating. It is as simple as that.

So was there cheating at the National Close? MCF needs to make a determination without fear or favour. And if there is any doubt then a playoff again is the proper thing to do.

And if so, then we also need to determine who was involved and how was the cheating done? We need to be serious on this. Throw away what doesn't work. Read what Bruce Lee said again. That is the way to excellence. But to do that we need courage to discard the old and what doesn't work.

For that to happen the officials and you need to stand up to those that use intimidation, deflection, lies and slander to forward their hidden agenda.

The way forward is not to join them in their recipe of failure as proven over the last 30 years. The way forward is also not to bury your head in the sand shaking with fear.

If everybody says nothing, does nothing then we will see another 30 years of kangkung players over time. I think it is a fair statement to say that there was probably a time when Jimmy was a strong player. When Jimmy was a man. But look at him today. What happened that he can so viciously attack the Juniors as he has done over the last few years? What does he want? What has happened to the players that have fallen to his influence?

Think about it. Maybe the chess community was unfair to him at one point. But that is history. The players today were not responsible for him becoming a kangkung. So why the desperate need to make the current batch into kangkungs like him?

That is the real question. If we can answer that then we can do things differently today. Or our next crop of players will all end up the same way.