Opening Ceremony disappoints Brunei

IT WAS the evening of August 8. We were rushing home after a relative's pre-wedding ceremony to eagerly catch up with the world-epic opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, which has been billed to be the best ever.

Earlier during the day, we were overwhelmed by the rush of emotional expectations of pride and joy upon reading the local newspapers that His Majesty The Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan was on his way to Beijing to attend the official opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, which would broadcast live the Brunei Darussalam contingent marching in carrying the pride of our country — our national flag, fluttering with pride to affirm our country's participation in the name of the Olympic spirit.

We sat patiently — fully beaming with national pride — with our eyes glued to our two TV sets, with two tape-recording machines in operation, awaiting for the TV cameras in the "Bird-Nest Stadium" to zoom in onto our national flag and our marching contingent.

But out of the blue, the running commentary announced that Brunei Darussalam had been excluded from participating in the Olympic Games and also the Opening Ceremony.

Instantaneously the onrush of disbelief was flooding the mind: "Ya Allah, why? What has happened? What were the reasons?" If Iraq had earlier been rejected by the Olympic World Council but in the end has managed to proudly march on during the Opening Ceremony, what really then has been bedevilling the Brunei contingent?

Realistically, most Bruneians, if not all, never expected — technically, physically and psychologically — for Brunei Darussalam to win any Olympic Medals.

Just ponder on these physical and psychological hurdles, have you ever ponder how hard it is to get to be the top eight swimmers at an Olympic Games.

One could admire the feats of Australian Libby Trickett, a gold medallist who congratulated the Singaporean swimmer, Tao Li, who finished fifth in the 100 metres butterfly event.

The mother of Michael Phelps, the current 11-gold swimming medalist said: "This flame within Michael to excel is private and personal," as reported by The Strait Times on August 12.

It is against these feats of physical and psychological accomplishments that we Bruneians should be as determined to enter these epic World Games. Any injury, any mishap can happen long before, immediately before, or even during an event of the Olympic Games.

The modern Olympics have always had been conducted in the true spirit of world competition for peace and friendship among participants and participating countries — big and small, islands and continents, powerful and weak, rich and poor, advanced and developing, black and white, brown and pale — are all bonded by the unifying spirit of true sportsmanship.

Winning and losing are the end products of participation, be it of interpersonal interactions.

The August issue of Reader's Digest which carried the article "True Spirit — Stirring Tales of Olympic Sportsmanship" stated that "Indeed, since the modern Games began in 1896, there have been hundreds of outstanding feats of sportmanship — often unheralded and forgotten — that embody the Olympic ideal, the "fierce competitions" that suddenly turned into helping, saving each others' lives, and deliberately ignoring the sure probability of winning a gold, a silver or a bronze medal".

What ever the truth that has caused such a deep global humiliation to Brunei Darussalam, the nation must not ever descend into a national blame game. By victimising those helpless athletes, we are launching a hunt for scapegoats. To the World this has been a national debacle.

The fiasco of those "avoidable national disasters" has only succeeded in exhibiting our general paralysis to the billions of TV spectators, and also to Internet bloggers all over the world.

This "debacle" has reflected our cultural habit of self-immolation by pushing, pulling, tearing, scratching, and back stabbing one another: "Jatoh menjatoh budaya Melayu; kitani menang kakai-mengakai"; rather than pulling ourselves together to survive and progress from that event onwards. This should have been a simple, straight forward process, but it had ended in a global humiliation. No wonder we as a nation have not had success in managing a much more complex process of economic development. Perhaps there may be some national good arising from the ashes of these avoidable disasters.

Yang Dimuliakan Pehin Orang Kaya Lela Raja Dato Seri Laila Jasa Haji Awang Abdul Rahman bin Haji Abdul Karim DSLJ, PJK was formerly Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Defence.

The Brunei Times