Ministers make poor sportsmen

From Bisnis Indonesia

As soon as it became known that donated "sports funds" were being kept in a private bank account of a Cabinet minister who was also a sports organization chairman, I could only imagine how rich these Cabinet ministers doubling as sports organization chiefs would be if all the donations for those organizations were kept in their own private bank accounts.

It seems that the time has come to end the practice of naming Cabinet ministers or other government officials to head sports organizations. Their presence there is of no use anyway. Proof: On a world scale, we have not been able to excel in any sport at all. Or let's not even think about world sports; even in Southeast Asia we have been doing badly.

Let's leave the management of sports to the professionals. Stop state interference in sports and leave this area to private business people. Let them wrack their brains and find money through honest means, and not by extorting it from other business people.

F. YOLANDA

Jakarta