One World One Dream One Passport

One World, One dream alright, but there is also only one passport. In the article I had posted, it was said that the representatives of the various nations during the Olympic Games were not necessarily from the nations that they represented. Notably, many of the competitors for the table tennis events were born in China before going to the other countries. However, does this issue of nationality really matter? It is after all one world with one common dream.

The first key point that the opposing stand can bring up is concerning a fundamental benefit of the Olympic Games. When one's national team is participating in an Olympic event, one will instinctively feel that sense of national pride and spur the team on with words of encouragement. That in itself promotes national pride. Then, when the country wins a medal at the games, every citizen of the state would feel more patriotic towards the land. Thus, Olympic events can promote national identity. However, when naturalised foreigners represent a country, would the impact be the same in national pride? My answer to that is that for a tiny speck on the map like Singapore, even being represented in the first place is a thing to be proud of. So what if they are foreigners? It only goes to show that they came here because it was a better place for them to live and exhibit their talents and potential; and that's why they represented us, which helped them to show case their talents to the whole world, beside making the country that they adopted to be proud of.

Also, there is the issue of their citizenship. Some say, they might take up citizenship in a new country but their loyalty would only remain with their home country. It is of course, a valid argument. It is the same concept as why the Singapore Government relies more on a homegrown citizen army than on a full time full force mercenary army--in times of economic hardship or when they are unwilling to fight, the latter will simply desert the employers. However this cannot be likened to foreign athletes. In this case, the athletes are not like the mercenary army can potentially be. Not that we were experiencing economic hardship, but they fought a long and hard battle with the top seeds from China and remained true to Singapore all the way. They did not give the match away to China just because they were born there. They fought fair and square, and the better team simply beat the other. Also another rebuttal to the point will be that in a country like Singapore, dual citizenship is not allowed. So the athletes had to take the hard decision to drop the citizenship of their motherland before taking up our citizenship whole-hearted. Since they did that, it only goes to show that these athletes really want to be part of us.

Generally speaking, the world today is border-less. People are going and coming everywhere because they are allowed to do so. This has allowed for rapid globalization. That is the reason Singapore remains alive today. In one generation the population of natives (who are not really natives because their predecessors were immigrants themselves to some once unknown swamp-cum-fishing-village) could halve because of the slumping birth rate, but a constant influx of foreigners should stabilise the population. Therefore by nature of the state, it is alright if it is represented by foreigners. If we ourselves were once immigrants, why target them? At least now we know how the Orang Lauts would have felt in the 1820s!

The Olympics should now shift the focus more towards the individual. In this virtually border-less world, the individual should receive more importance than the nation, because the nation no longer truly represents a collective identity of people. Like I said, if they are going and coming all over the place, then it will be difficult to group a type of people as belonging to one nation. For example, if Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps both came to represent Singapore, it does not necessarily say that Singapore is a sporting powerhouse. So the Olympics should now change the focus to the individual.

Besides, nationality should not be an issue. We are one common family of human beings with a common dream of achieving peace, prosperity and progress. The only true passport we have that reflects of us is not our national identity, but our human existence.

Therefore, I personally, feel that it does not matter who represents which country in the Olympic Games, but what matters is that the athletes are given the chance to up their game, and for many, allowed to fulfill their dreams of competing in the global arena.

PS: On a side note, if we really want true blue Singaporeans in the Olympics, we should put more emphasis on shooting because after all NS has trained thousands of us to shoot with precision over the years.

THE END