Legislators back sports door prize scheme
Zakki Hakim, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The House of Representatives (DPR) expressed support on Thursday for the National Sports Council (KONI) scheme in conjunction with PT Metropolitan Magnum Indonesia (MMI) to hand out door prizes at sporting events in a bid to attract more fans and raise money for sports development.
However, several legislators asked the council to disseminate information about the program thoroughly and make sure no gambling of any form is involved.
Heri Akhmadi, deputy spokesperson for House Commission VI, said that the commission appreciated KONI's effort in obtaining an opportunity of private funding and advised the council to be cautious in running the program.
It has been acknowledged that national sports programs need much more money than they are getting at present, but the government is unable to place a high priority on budget allocations for sports, which caused the council to turn to private funding, even though MMI will reportedly only contribute 5 percent of the profits to athletic development projects.
Heri said that private funding was often associated with gambling, mainly because earlier programs such as Porkas and SDSB (local lottery games) eventually were found to be forms of gambling and only a small percentage was actually contributed to sports development.
Heri said that if the program was not a form of gambling, then it was the government's right to run the program and to convince interest groups that were not yet convinced.
"The decision (to run the program) is in the hands of the Minister of Social Affairs," Heri said while adding that unfortunately that the ministry was not supervised by Commission VI, which oversees religions, education, culture and tourism.
Heri said the commission would assist in promoting the program by inviting the Indonesian Council of Ulemas (MUI) and other groups that have expressed opposition, to hear their objections.
"Anyway, does every government action need MUI's consent? I don't think so," stated Heri, a legislator from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) faction.
KONI chairman Agum Gumelar said during the hearing that he was puzzled by the people's skepticism of the door prize program, saying,"our biggest problem is hypocrisy."
He said that the program was to serve a bigger interest of the nation, to improve the country's sports.
Last year KONI has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with MMI, a local company affiliated with Malaysian gaming enterprise Magnum Corporation Berhad (MCB) to hold a door prize game named the Sports and Social Welfare Fund Game.
The game has been controversial, but, to date, both KONI and especially MMI, as the game operator, insisted that the program was not gambling but failed to provide details on the game mechanism.
Recently MMI announced that it would only earmark five percent of total revenue to sports development, while 36 percent for the operational costs.
In Thursday's hearing, the commission also praised the national contingent's achievement in the 2003 Vietnam Southeast Asian (SEA) Games and expressed its support for the 2006 Indonesia Rises program, a sports development plan to improve local athletic quality ahead of the 2006 Asian Games in Doha, Qatar.
The commission concluded that after the RI contingent finished third with 55 golds after host Vietnam and Thailand was quite an achievement considering that more than 60 percent of the squad members were young inexperienced athletes.
Moreover, the commission advised KONI to promote the Indonesia Rises program to get nation-wide support.
Lastly, the commission promised to prioritize the discussion on the sports bill and deliberate it before its five-year term ended in September.
During the hearing KONI also presented the progress of its preparation for the Athens Olympics in August, the Thomas and Uber Cups in May and the 16th National Games (PON) in September.