Keynote Speech by Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs Edwin Tong SC, at the Aquatics Integrity Unit and the Law Society of Singapore Meet-and-Greet Event
Ms Beatrix Hagmann, Consul and Chargé D’Affaires (Ad Interim) at the Swiss Embassy – Thank you very much for welcoming us, for opening up your newest home to all of us here. Thank you so much for the hospitality.
Mr Miguel Cardenal, Chair of the Aquatics Integrity Unit (AQIU), Mr Ken Lalo, Vice Chair of the AQIU, and also all members of the esteemed AQIU – Thank you very much for being here in Singapore on this momentous week for us. It is not just a moment in history for us, hosting the World Aquatics Championships, but also one where we hope will leave a lasting legacy. When we started planning for and thinking about hosting this Championships, we said to ourselves, beyond the medals and beyond the world records that we hope will be set here, what is that legacy that we want to leave behind? The answer is we want to leave behind the legacy of swimming, something simple. Every swimmer - able to swim, not necessarily swim to win medals, but swim because it is good for you, it is a survival skill, and it is a very social activity as well. So, that is what we wanted to do when we decided to host the Championships here.
Miss Lisa Sam, my erstwhile colleague, President of the Law Society of Singapore, fellow members of the Singapore Bar,
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
1. I want to start by welcoming all those who are foreign to Singapore, to Singapore. We, of course, welcome you with our warm weather, but I would like to say that we are actually truly warm as well –in terms of our hospitality, as well as the range of food offerings that we have, and the sporting offerings that we offer.
2. I thought that before I go into speaking a bit about law and sports - the harder stuff - I would give you a brief introduction from an oversight perspective of how I saw my role in the Sport Ministry, which is what the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) was overseeing, and in the Law ministry, because that intersection is really what has brought us here today.
3. In the field of law, Singapore has been well known for being a jurisdiction that is very much grounded on the rule of law. Everything that we do has its origins in the rule of law. We do it by way of law-making, the way in which we organise our institutions. Our governance is very much driven by transparent, open, rule of law, and strong governance.
4. That ethos is something that carries into how we organise society as well – how we look at the functioning of different civil society organisations; how we conduct ourselves in the space of civic social compact; the rights and obligations of each member of society that we owe to each other; a sense of community; a sense that there will be occasions where the rights of the individual might succumb to the rights of the overall good of society; how we organise ourselves. That is really the essence of how we look at the rule of law and how we use that to progress society.
5. In the space of sport, over the last few years when I have been overseeing sport, it has been an important aspect of my ministry. How so? We believe that sport gives our citizens a right or a pathway towards success, that perhaps through academia or through the traditional routes of arts and science, you might not ordinarily find.
6. In our midst, we have found tremendous talent. We have found the ability to unearth so much talent when we look at sport. I will give you some examples of what we have done and what the thinking has been.
7. In terms of world organisations, we have had several locate in Singapore. We have had International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF). One of the benefits of having ITTF in Singapore over the years has been the ability to host one of the major smash events in Singapore. I will tell you a story about the impact it has on us.
8. It was one of the first events that saw the light after COVID. We were able to open our doors to an international audience for one of the ITTF smash events. Because it was held in Singapore, we were able to field one of our youngest, brightest stars.
9. Izaac Quek today is a household name, an Olympian, and also a multi-SEA Games medalist, but he started at the ITTF smash tournament in Singapore three years ago. He was just about 15 years old, and he was in his first Smash. He was on a centre table, almost quivering, because he was nervous, and he was up against one of the world’s stars, and he lost that match pretty quickly.
10. Undeterred, he came back the following year, second edition of Singapore Smash. This time round, he made it through a few rounds. In the round of 16, he was drawn against the world number 15. He was down two sets in the best of five, but something clicked in the third, and I could see it in his body language. He turned it around, and in the decider, he won 3:2.
11. He never looked back after that, because from that, he experienced high level table tennis. From there, he went on to win three gold medals at the next edition of the SEA Games, and then qualified for the Olympics, and he was in Paris last year. This boy is just actually just 17, barely 18, now about to push on to what I believe greater things.
12. How did that happen? I think the opportunity for Singapore to host a major game in Singapore, to be able to field our own in the space, allowing us to progress junior young talent. Today, we are hosting the World Aquatics Championships. By the way, I watched Noe Ponti yesterday. He’s the current world record holder for the 50m butterfly. He qualified fastest in the race, and I think the final is tonight. All the best to Noe, and we hope that he will set a world record here in Singapore as well. I think he’s a fantastic talent.
13. But when I mentioned the World Aquatics Championships, it is remiss not to mention one of our own in Singapore – Gan Ching Hwee. If you pick up the news yesterday and today, yesterday, in the 400m freestyle heats, she broke the 15-year national record, and that is not even her pet event. She broke it by more than two seconds yesterday. Today, she broke the 1500m freestyle national record by almost nine seconds, and in doing so, she qualified fourth place in the championships, earning a place for her in the final tomorrow night.
14. For a small country like Singapore, to have a finalist in the world championships is nothing short of phenomenal. She would only be the third swimmer who has clinched a place in the final of a world championship swimming event. And to do it in a home crowd, to inspire many other young Singaporean swimmers to pursue their dreams, I think it is priceless.
15. So the reasons for hosting the Games – more than tourism, which of course is important, more than bringing vibe and verve to Singapore, which is equally important – is the fact that we are able to develop sport, to develop young talent, to have them showcase their talent, pit themselves against the very best in the world, and to be swimming in that space.
16. Tomorrow night, Ching Hwee will be swimming in the final as the fourth fastest qualifier, two lanes away from Katie Ledecky, whose reputation precedes her. To be two lanes away from a world star, legend like this, I think leaves an indelible impact on young swimmers, and this impact is invaluable.
17. How, then, does the Aquatics Integrity Unit (AQIU) fit into this space? Well, I think sport can never be seen in isolation. We witness sport. We watch sport. It is a spectacle because of the unexpected, because we can never know what the human endeavour can achieve.
18. For that to work, to impact us, sport has got to be properly governed, like any other aspect of society that I mentioned. There has got to be a strong set of rules around sport - no cheating, no doping, no playing around with the rules. Sport has to be sport, and the playing field has to be level. So, the role that the AQIU plays, is very important to ensure the integrity of sport. This applies equally to all sports. It is important for us to ensure that there is a strong governance framework, a strong rule of law, and a strong transparency framework for resolving disputes around sport. That is why we welcome the presence of AQIU in Singapore. We welcome World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to Singapore. WADA has been a long-time partner of Singapore for many years. We have a local WADA unit that looks after anti-doping, and we are very strict about the rules around that too.
19. We also welcome having more of the organisations like the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Singapore, when the opportunity arises. The lawyers amongst us will know that over time, we have built up a very strong thought leadership around the law. If you look at Maxwell Chambers, it is home to the world’s best and leading legal institutions, whether it is the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), INSOL International (INSOL), International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) or American Arbitration Association (AAA).
20. I would like to see that sport does the same in Singapore, that you will be able to leverage the framework that currently already exists in Singapore and for us in Singapore to put sport resolution on top of that platform. I think it is time for us to elevate sport, to site and locate major sporting institutions that resolve sporting disputes in Singapore, to allow us to uphold the framework of transparency and governance and rule of law in sport. I think we can do that well, we can achieve this.
21. Before I stop, I will just leave you with one other comment. Part of the reason why I would have to dash off after this is because there is another major event that is happening right now in Singapore. Singapore celebrates its 60th year of independence this year, and the international Sports Hall of Fame is also celebrating its 60th year this year. For the first time, they are currently, as we speak right here now, having an occasion to induct a new hall of famers into the Hall of Fame. And for the first time ever, a Singaporean – Joseph Schooling –will be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
22. There is a story in there as well. Back in 2008, the US Olympic swim team trained in Singapore at the Singapore Chinese Swimming Club. A small boy who was only about 12 or 13 then, saw Michael Phelps train and went up to him and took a picture. If you look it up, there is a picture of Joseph Schooling and Michael Phelps when Schooling was tiny, next to Phelps. He said his dream one day is to beat Phelps. Eight years later, he did beat Phelps at the 2016 Rio Olympics. He not only beat Phelps, he also beat Laszlo Cseh and Chad Le Clos. It was the Olympic record at that time – 50.39 seconds. He remains our first and only Olympic Gold medallist. So, for the first time, we had one gold and three silvers.
23. I think all these are stories behind how sport can be such a motivator in life, how sport transcends just winning those medals, how sport can teach us to be better versions of ourselves, and how sport inspires and brings out the best of us in human endeavour. I think all of us in this room are of that same mindshare, that we want to promote sport, we want to build sport, but it must also come with rules. And with rules, we know that we are an environment where it is the best possible platform for that human endeavour to shine and to surface.
24. Once again, thank all of you for being here. I thank the Swiss Embassy for hosting us, and I want to encourage all of you to think bold in terms of the next steps for anchoring sport dispute resolution and sport governance in Singapore. On behalf of my ministry, Ministry of Law, we will be happy to work with sporting institutions to ground that in Singapore as much as we can.
25. Thank you very much once again and have a great week ahead.
Last updated on 28 July 2025