You’d think that there’d be less blunders by now considering the amount of backlash that the SEA Games has been getting.
For the first time in 16 years, Kuala Lumpur is playing host to the SEA Games. More popularly known as Kuala Lumpur 2017 (#KL2017 on social media), the multi-sport event kicked off on 19th August 2017 and is now underway, with 404 events in 38 sports in its schedule. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been going as smoothly as we’d like.
Barely 3 days into the games, an upside-down Indonesian flag fiasco in the SEA Games booklet caused an uproar. Indonesians were up in arms over the misprint, which was first spotted by Indonesian Youth and Sports minister Imam Nahrawi.
Malaysian Minister of Youth & Sports YB Khairy Jamaluddin issued a public apology on Twitter before meeting Indonesia’s Youth and Sports Minister Imam Nahrawi in person to apologise, and work is currently underway to reprint the SEA Games booklet. Indonesian President Joko Widodo (better known as Jokowi) later said that he has forgiven Malaysia and also hoped that Indonesians would not react excessively to the mistake.
Baru sahaja berjumpa @imam_nahrawi untuk memohon maaf secara rasmi kpd rakyat Indonesia atas kesilapan percetakan bendera RI. Tkasih Bpk. pic.twitter.com/YOO8ICRVja
— Khairy Jamaluddin 🇲🇾🌺 (@Khairykj) August 20, 2017
But it didn’t end there.
Yesterday, a snapshot of the medal tally on a television screen surfaced, which showed that the broadcast station got the wrong flags to the wrong countries. In fact, 8 out of 11 flags were wrong e.g. Vietnam has the Singapore flag and Singapore has the Thailand flag, Thailand has the Indonesian flag and Indonesia has the Vietnam flag, the Philippines has the Myanmar flag and Myanmar has the Philippine flag, etc.
The most awkward was when Malaysia got our own country flag wrong.
During the broadcast for finals of the 50m freestyle, while the announcer was introducing the athletes, Malaysian swimmer Keith Lim Kit Sern’s infographic had the Singaporean flag instead of the Jalur Gemilang (Malaysian flag). Also, it said “KUL” (abbreviation for Kuala Lumpur) instead of “MAS” or “MAL” (abbreviation for Malaysia), which is odd and sticks out like a sore thumb because athletes are supposed to be representing their countries, not cities.
See for yourselves:
Oh, Malaysia ?♀️
Source: mothership.sg, Sport Singapore / Featured image: YouTube screenshot.
