Goodbye and good riddance

Not many are worthy of such a statement from myself as Karim Ibrahim, the controversial but long-serving personality in Malaysian athletics that from today finally becomes FORMER Malaysian Athletics Union (MAU) deputy president.
It has been 19 years of destruction, in my humble opinion, that athletics has gone through especially with him having a hand in every possible controversy within the sport at least since I began as a sports writer 12 years ago.
My last brush with this character was a harsh one in the defence of the work of my former assistant sports editor S. Selvam, whom Karim had maliciously tried to discredit amongst fellow sports journalists as we sat at the Wisma OCM coffee house after a function in 2006.
It was not the first time I had found Karim to be up to such tricks. There he was, while answering questions about a controversy over a dubious plan to send athletes for a foreign training stint.
"Satu saja saya mintak tolong, you all jangan refer pada artikel Selvam. You tengok apa dia tulis, ini memang jahat punya orang," Karim blurted out of his mouth without noticing me sat at the next table with my back towards him.
"Macam ni punya reporter memang ada agenda jahat. Dia mau serang kita saja."
I listened as this carried on until I just had enough. Without even offering him my respect of standing up before addressing him, I just turned towards him and said:"Ya, kita memang jahat. Orang macam you kita mau kasi buang."
Karim, to his credit has had his supporters from within the sport and the press for long periods of time. Finally, there is some sense which never surfaced as Karim continuously somehow maintained a stranglehold on the sport. There is some justice which took a long time in coming.
Let's leave it at that. Alhamdulillah.