Some of my past experience that may be beneficial to MCF now.

It does look like there may be a glimmer of hope that there are still a few decent people left in MCF with the Fadzil Nayan decision. So I write this for their benefit. My point has always been that we must take action before the nasi jadi bubur. So learn from the history and learn to recognize those that pretend to be angels but are actually the devil incarnate.

So a very short synopsis here. This may be new to those who just joined the chess circuit but these are the historical facts.

In 2009, when I was elected into the Perak Chess Association, I made the bold move to bring in written selection criteria. At that time MCF itself had no written selection and Greg was the new Secretary after Hamid.

But let me give more details surrounding the Perak Chess Association AGM for the first time today before I continue this story. During that time Dr Yee was the President and he was very unpopular since all players were hand picked by him. Allow me to recount our experience. Mark was the newly minted U12 State Champion and there was a "selection" for the Perak Junior Team. We were invited by the Vice President to attend but when we arrived Mark was chased out of the tournament hall by Dr Yee and friends. So that was how it was.

I had a lot of support from the members so what Dr Yee as the President then did was to hold the AGM on the same day that the Perak Team was leaving for MSSM and so many of my supporters who were teachers could not come to the AGM as they had to accompany the students. The other thing Dr Yee did was to accost all the members with voting rights as they came in the door. I could even see him pulling people and shouting at them. And that was the condition at that time.

But when it came to the vote I only lost by one vote to be the new President. And that was also because Dr Yee did not stand but put Chan up instead to stand against me. And Chan was seen as a sort of neutral person at that time.

Now to the point. The election brought in a new team from my camp as well as members of the old team. Mixture of new and old. Encik Kamaruddin, the Secretary of Perak Chess Association now and also the current Chairman of the Selection Committee MCF came in under my ticket. He was an unknown then.

The ticket that I stood on was to bring in change and one of the changes was a fair selection criteria for all. During the AGM, I was offered the VP post which I declined. And that was taken up by Encik Kumar, also from my ticket and also an unknown then. I only wanted to remain an ordinary committee member but in charge of selection.

One other thing. When we got as many seats as we did from the AGM, my team was jubilant. But I cautioned them that it is not over. We came in on a ticket and we must fulfill our promise at the AGM. But they wanted to kiss and make up with Dr Yee. So when I pushed for the selection criteria there was a lot of resistance from Dr Yee and he brought in Eddy Fong for a spell to try to sabotage that effort. One day Kamaruddin and Kumar invited me to their office where they confronted me. They asked me why I was in the Committee and I answered that it was to ensure fair play in selection and for the good of chess. And they both told me that they were there for business reasons.

Shortly after I was sacked without grounds.

What I am trying to say here is that the introduction of proper selection will not be easy. The culture of the back doors are very very well established and these people will do anything to preserve that power to do so.

Now lets carry on with the story. I told all this to the new MCF Secretary, Greg when we met. And I explained why written selection is important to the growth of chess in Malaysia. I related where the pitfalls were and the type of resistance he will meet hoping he can learn from my mistakes. And shortly after Greg introduced the first ever written criteria for NAG. And the rest came after. For Juniors and then the Seniors. So that is the perspective from historical facts.

And this is the current resistance from the back door boys. Here.