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In 2020, Sports Illustrated proclaimed its “Sportsperson of the Year” as something dubbed “the activist athlete,” choosing five athletes – LeBron James, Breanna Stewart, Patrick Mahomes, Naomi Osaka, and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif – that represented the term. Like so many athletes who came before them, these athletes vividly demonstrate the potential of sport to shine a spotlight on critical issues in society, yet again solidifying how sport does not exist merely as some kind of escape, but is a major stakeholder in global campaigns for social justice.

This chapter historicizes the contemporary resurgence of athlete activism, largely connected to the reawakening of Black Lives Matters (BLM) in 2020, within what journalist Howard Bryant has called The Heritage, with athletes who acknowledge and accept the charge to use their spotlights for those who have none. From the turning point of the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, which saw collective movements of African-American athletes culminate in the powerful Black power protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, a protest that built upon the legacies of so many, to the ongoing debates that surround the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Rule 50, athletes have long understood how sport serves not only as an integral part of society but also as an agent for change. Contemporary cries for athletes to “shut up and dribble” echo past claims that sport takes place on a level playing field that transcends politics. The history of sports demonstrates otherwise, as athletes embody every imaginable, intersectional, classification of political actor.

The negative consequences of corruption for a country's development have been identified in Chapter 1. Corruption is ubiquitous and is found in “all political systems, at every level of government, and in the delivery of all scarce public goods and services” (Caiden, 1988, p. 6). Corruption is a universal problem, and governments all over the world have introduced measures to tackle this “social pandemic” which has “many faces” and is “the most challenging obstacle to economic development” (Campos & Bhargava, 2007, pp. 1–2).

However, after Singapore's independence and separation from Malaysia on 9 August 1965, the PAP leaders were forced to change their vision of Singapore as part of Malaysia to Singapore as an independent nation, which they had earlier rejected. In other words, the PAP leaders had to “reinvent” Singapore to ensure its survival.