New national body to resolve Malaysia’s taekwondo woes

Tuesday March 2, 2010
By RAJES PAUL

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s taekwondo exponents can now afford to wear a big smile.

With the formation of Taekwondo Malaysia (TM) taking shape smoothly, the door is now opened for exponents to represent Malaysia in international tournaments.

They only have to be affiliated to TM in order to gain entry into tournaments like the Asian Games.

Yesterday, the protem committee chaired by Tunku Tan Sri Imran Tuanku Ja’afar met to fine tune the setting up of the new national governing body.

A smiling Tunku Imran, who is also the president of the Olympic Council of Malaysia, said that he was happy that all parties were working together to bring back the glory days of taekwondo.

“Currently, the new governing body is in the process of getting the affiliation at the states, clubs and institutions sorted out,” said Tunku Imran.

“All will be given voting rights. Every state will be given two votes while the active ones will be rewarded with three. There will be a criteria to determine the active states.”

“We hope that the whole process will be completed by June. I met up with the president (Dr Chungwon Choue, World Taekwondo Federation) in Vancouver recently and he is happy with the progress taking place in TM,” he added.

The protem committee was set-up to form and register TM as the national governing body. The sole recognised body will look into the affairs of the WTF in Malaysia.

Several positive steps that had taken place since the set-up of the protem committee are the de-registration of Malaysian Taekwondo Association (MTA) and the reaffirmation made by Malaysian Taekwondo Clubs Association (MTCA) and Malaysian Taekwondo Federation (MTF) to disband on March 4 and 19 respectively in support of TM.

The meeting yesterday was also attended by members of the old ad hoc committee of MTA, officials from Ministry of Education, National Sports Council and Sports Commissioner.