The 29th SEA Games is going on right now in Malaysia and in just the first few days of the opening ceremony, there were already a few controversies surfacing that appeared to cast Malaysia in a bad light. Remember the embarrassment we faced when it was highlighted that we printed the Indonesian flag upside down? Malu lah!
Source: Twitter
Of course, we quickly made amends and apologised to Indonesia but some citizens were extremely upset by the incident and retaliated by hacking some Malaysian websites among other things. However, it seems that the Indonesians themselves aren’t better at this flag-printing thing either.
Based on a report by Chinapress, a tweet by a Thai netizen pointed out that the Indonesians had gotten their flag wrong on a leaflet that was posted by the local media.
Source: Maklumat
Source: Free Images
In the image, it appears that the Indonesians had printed the Thai flag with the wrong colour sequence starting with blue, white, red, white, blue, when the actual sequence is supposed to be red, white, blue, white, red. Uh-oh! Some netizens commented that it looks similar to the Costa Rican flag minus their signature coat of arms.
The image with the offensive flag was allegedly posted on a local government website, the Ministry of Manpower of the Republic of Indonesia on August 19 to announce the start of the 29th SEA Games and in support of their athletes. Maklumat covered the news of the announcement without realising that the flag was swapped with the wrong colours.
Source: Kemnaker
We tried searching for the original post on the Ministry of Manpower of the Republic of Indonesia’s website, but it looks like it has been taken down although the article can still be searched in their archives. So far, there doesn’t seem to be any news of the Thai government making a fuss of the issue yet but several netizens said that the Indonesians should apologise to the Thais as well. Looks like the Thais are more chill?
Keep calm and focus on the games, people! Let’s continue cheering for our athletes! 🙂
Also read: “I Purposely Attached the Malaysian Flag Upside Down and Drove it Around”
