To be or not to be

Being a lover of sports and a man with a nose to the ground, two words in the English language intrigued me more than the rest. At the same time I tried to understand the meaning of those two words, taking them in their present context where local sports are concerned.

The paradox is that the two words are touted by a lot of people at their whim, but, I at times wonder if they really know the meaning or just are trying to make huge empty noises so that they could mislead the unsuspecting public.

The two magic words were – Democracy and Interim. So very dutifully I consulted the Oxford dictionary for their meaning. It said -- Democracy: System of government in which all the people of a country can vote to elect their representatives. Interim: Intended to last for only a short time until a permanent solution is found.

I then remembered a chat I once had with a former secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka before the said entity became the present huge money spinner. He explained “At that time there were only five employees in that whole institution, but the work went on. However I used to get the services of my private secretary and get half the work done and used to give her some money out of my own pocket and at the end of the day everyone was happy. Mind you, even at that time we were a Test playing nation. The difference was that the game did not have money, and there were very few takers to those positions.”

Nevertheless the passage I just mentioned was one phase of cricket in this country. But there are other sports bodies which will never even get the monies that cricket saw even at that time, but, in-fighting is rampant in most of them and some are even under the lock and key of Interim Committees even now.

At present there are fifty two sports bodies in the country which come within the purview of the Sports Law which was introduced by the late K.B. Ratnayake in 1973, which thus gave the reins of sport to the Minister of Sports in no uncertain manner. The original idea of a Sports Law and how it happened may have been for good reasons and the occurrences that prevailed in sport at that time, but, today it has almost come to the level of a political tool that can be operated by the party in power.

It also must be said that the reasons for sports in Sri Lanka to come to this sorry state of affairs has also happened as a result of people who were democratically elected misusing or mismanaging the trust bestowed upon by the general membership of the given sport.

I remember in 1998, Maitland Place looked a battle field on the day Clifford Ratwatte, a relative of the then President of the country took on businessman Thilanga Sumathipala. Any one can point a finger at any one. As a kid even I did it against my younger brother when we got caught doing something that we were not supposed to do. But, the fact remains – the insiders know exactly who did what.

Just the other day, in spite of the president and a whole host of officials getting re-elected uncontested, there were ugly scenes in front of the media and other strangers. Once again those responsible know exactly who did what. Ironically these acts are committed by respectable (or is it) people who make a very comfortable living by some other means and do not have to depend upon this little name tag behind or in front of their names at all. But, shamelessly they keep on doing so.

Now at present Cricket, Taekwando , Wu-shu, Karate, Kabbadi, Badminton, Swimming, Hockey, Body Building and Wrestling comes under the hammer of Interim Committees. This means these sports have temporary bodies looking after them. At the same time just brining some new meaning to the word interim, Taekwando has an interim committee running sport from 1996 and it has gone through six sports ministers noticed or unnoticed. At the same time cricket is no better.

Then from the remaining 42 sports 13 bodies that have had problems and could not hold their AGMs on the Sports Law stipulated March 31 have been given an ultimatum up to the 30th of April. A powerful committee that includes D.B. Dahanayake – Director General of Sports, Ministry of Sports, Dr. Maiya Gunasekera -- head of the Sports Council and Kiran Atapattu advisor to the Minister of Sports also have been appointed to look into this matter. So Sunday Musings asked D.B. Dahanayake as to what would happen if any of these bodies fail to have their AGMs before the cut-off date of April 30th. The prompt answer was that they would be allowed to stay on until they are in a position to have the AGMs. Sad but it is true. The truth is the Sports Law is not very clear on what would happen if the AGMs are not held on that stipulated day.

Out of the goodie goodies every one knows the problems at the Tennis Association. Then there are stories about certain sports run by ‘God Fathers’ -- in Lankan style. This leaves only a few sports bodies that continue under the cherished democratic way.

Now we are at the base again! If the democratic way seems not to work, one has to resort to the Interim method. However here what happens is when a person is appointed to the Interim Committee he has to get a lot of rights in the right direction. For instance take two individuals who are spoken about for a position in an Interim Committee. Person number one may be a person who knows the sport and a person who can see to the development of it. But, ironically he is in the wrong camp.

Person number two does not know much about the sport, but, is in the good books of the Minister or some high-up in the ruling party. I guess you would know who would win the race!

Finally if one really weighs the pros and cons he would see that the problem lies with the archaic sports law, who could or would bell cat we do not know, but the sooner it is done with some workable laws it is better for the sport in this country.