World Cup and our SMEs

It is a long standing debate whether one should win with homegrown talents or bought talents. Had France lifted the World Cup, it could easily be argued that we have a winner from Africa for the first time.

Of course with billions in broadcast rights and sponsorship at stake, we can't expect the world body behind football to play fair, even as hundreds of red and yellow cards are handed out each season. The same in-breeding that led to their head honcho calling for every country to name a stadium after the great Pele, shows the supposed diversity of the world body is merely a diversity in skin colour but not of ideas.

While spectators and fans worldwide continue to enjoy the antics of players, coaches and referees, we continue to see the injustice of an unequally financed sport. For this reason alone, I'm glad that the trophy is now paraded in Buenos Aires rather than the self-proclaimed capital of love.

In many ways, money is an effective substitute for talents. The best managers, coaches, players and stadiums can be bought. Some say referees too, but I shall not go there.

It is this precise mindset that has driven our trade and entrepreneurship development over the past two decades. Partially out of a lack of idea, but mostly because every other country is doing the same. And when you do it often enough, the shortcut become a narrative become a standard practice.

When the late Tun Razak (father of development and tragically, father of a criminal) was Prime Minister, trade (and investment) missions included our choicest of pineapples, town planners and bankers. Today, the bankers tagged along too, but the pineapples are replaced with promises of incentives and next-to-free land. We used to sell our ability to speak English, good rail and central location within Asia (when the Indonesians aren't blockading the Straits of Malacca); but today it is mostly how much we will save the investors by not paying tax (which the cheap labourers we supply to them have to) and other you-sratch-mine-i-scratch-yours sort of backdeals.

This same 'money-is-everything' mindset led to the plethora of grants that a creative entrepreneur could avail of, in the hope that some of them would not (in electoral terms), lose their deposits. Sure enough, this led to a dearth of innovations and hardwork - since free money is anytime better than hard-earned money.

But when you scratch off this tiny coat of pretend entrepreneurship and investments; you realise the dire straits we are in when it comes to talents, skills and knowledge. Every now and then, someone will cry out and say Malaysia has no talents. And the usual band-aid appears... in the form of an agency, no less, assigned to recruit and maintain talents. Or the myriad of roadmaps and blueprints that will supposedly resolve the matter, never mind that they are nothing more than new coats of veneer above the old ones.

Such is our dilemma. Talents (and respect) take a generation to build, but a mere election cycle to buy.

You can buy a boat load of lanky African footballers, teach them French and give them a French passport, but they are no more French than the tiny souvenir Eiffel Tower you buy for 1 euro each at the bottom of the tower. It's sickening when one can even develop a sense of national pride when one win in this manner.

I suppose I should listen to those who tell me to relax and enjoy the World Cup like we do WWE matches and American Idol; for the entertainment value that only money can buy.