Ceylon Today Editorial

Better the Confidence Better the Professional

10 September 2016

Sanath Jayasuriya, Chief Selector Sri Lanka Cricket, was recently heard in a TV interview say that the youngsters in the Sri Lanka team are not really professional players. This he says is due to the fact that you have to keep pushing them into action, in other words they need to be, so to say, spoon fed.

Sportsmen have to be ready to play on the international stage before being called up for national duty even to play in the A team. No coach is able to undertake touching up players at that level, they have to come ready. Denis Rodman an American basketball player when asked before the game "Are you ready to play?" said I was born ready, and that is confidence.

Sri Lanka is one of the countries where the cricket structure is very strong. Cricket is played in abundance and now even at grass root level. No one else but the chief of selectors would vouch for this better. The fact is he is one of the last of cricketers joining the mainstream, from outstations, to have been lucky enough come under a proper coach while still there.

If, Sanath Jayasuriya could have learnt the trade and become a true and proper, professional quality cricketer, surely, he should know what was ticking in him to be one; if so, there is hope that these new players can still be trained to be ones like him too.

There was a time when even school coaches were doing their work for the love of the game. In that situation also they had sense enough to also talk to their students about the way one conducts himself as a cricketer. Even though then professionalism in cricket was at its early stages, young cricketers got an idea cricket had another facet to it; this went on to make cricketers get the feel of how to be a professional. With that kind of training they were able to get employment and continue playing the game, at somewhat of a professional level.

A professional is one who knows his trade; when cricketers know about the game and how it is played from there onwards they will fit in to it better and gain more insight. Once that is done properly the youngster gains confidence filled with such knowledge.

Take a country like South Africa that was the best cricket side in the sixties until in the 1970s they got thrown out of the system because of their apartheid policies. They have not been able to reach those standards to date since being accepted back in the 1990s. Ten years later they appointed the twenty- three-year-old Grahame Smith to lead the team, and the team was full of professionals. The authorities may have been so confident on the youngster to let him lead a team of professionals on the international stage which had more hardened professionals leading other countries, on it.

There are reasons that go to make the average Sri Lankan youngsters not to be open and express themselves. Most young people in Sri Lanka suffer from this due to being told to listen and do what you are told from their childhood. As sports can make them open up there is the need to get them to learn to be more open now than in the past.

This stifling should be stopped for athletes to give their best, being more accepted in a free society. This is why it is important that schools make sport a subject in school. That is the way to get youngsters freed from being pressured into subservience.

Unless a youngster's mind is free from such they are made to succumb to peer pressures and parental influences that can be detrimental in a way. They may be harmful to certain attitudes that come with sports activity and building confidence. Youngsters, much to the disliking of elders, may begin speaking out which may be seen as being disobedient in a society that demands respecting seniors. In the more urban atmosphere now with globalization, it is already taking place with seniors accepting the changing culture of the youngster. Soon villages will catch it.

Sri Lankan families must begin to understand the value of building confidence in their children who have to intermingle with other global societies for survival in future. The average Sri Lankan youngster has very little exposure and being dependent when thrown in the deep end may be the reason they are unable to make decisions with ease, on their own. This is something that should be in the school curriculum's taught by professionals.

Daily News Editorial

A great achievement

10 September 2016

The rest of the Third World has always looked enviously at Sri Lanka’s excellent free education and health care systems which all Governments since independence have nurtured and developed. In fact, most of our health indices are either on par with or very close to those of the developed world. This is a singular achievement for an emerging economy in South Asia, which is generally regarded as one of the world’s poorest regions. Our post-independence leaders may have committed certain mistakes in other matters of policy, but they did not waver in their commitment to the policy of free healthcare and education, which are also inextricably linked.

This policy has borne fruit in ample measure judging by Sri Lanka’s health track record, which has now been internationally recognized. The World Health Organisation (WHO) presented Sri Lanka with three certificates for eliminating three deadly diseases from its soil at the 69th Session of the WHO Regional Committee of South-East Asia held in Colombo. Malaria, Filaria and Neonatal Tetanus are still deadly diseases that adversely affect millions every year in the developing world. Yet, Sri Lanka has succeeded in eliminating these diseases completely, marking a significant milestone in its healthcare programme. Sri Lanka has also fulfilled the criteria for certifying it Rubella-free and is due to receive a certificate to that effect.

Sri Lanka is one of the very few countries, developed or developing, that has received such multiple accolades from the WHO, including the Award for Excellence in Public Health presented to President Maithripala Sirisena. In fact, only one other country in our region (The Maldives) has managed to eliminate Malaria before Sri Lanka, but one has to compare the two populations (Maldives 370,000 vs. Sri Lanka 21 million) and differences in topography to comprehend the scale of the challenge faced by Sri Lanka. Only 33 countries worldwide have been certified Malaria-free. In other South Asian countries, Malaria, which claimed 400,000 lives worldwide last year, is still rampant. Sri Lanka almost achieved the “zero-Malaria” feat way back in 1963 when only 17 cases of infection were reported islandwide from 2.8 million cases in 1947, but the disease roared back to life as complacency set in. It took another 50 years for the health authorities to wipe-out the disease.

Sri Lanka’s achievement and its recognition by WHO has come under intense scrutiny by the world media, which analysed how Sri Lanka managed the impossible despite a debilitating conflict, limited resources and remoteness/inaccessibility of certain areas. CNN even went to the extent of asking its viewers “can Sri Lanka show the world how to end Malaria?”. Going through the media analysis, two factors always come up on top – consistency and commitment. “It was a hard fight, [but] this is an example to the rest of the world,” said Dr. Pedro Alonso, Director of the WHO Global Malaria Programme. The authorities set up mobile malaria clinics that diagnosed and treated people much earlier, accompanied by mosquito eradication programmes, regular surveillance, community engagement and education programmes to make sure people knew the symptoms. These strategies worked well to keep malaria at bay and much the same strategies worked for the other diseases that have been eliminated within Sri Lanka.

One other factor that should be attributed to Sri Lanka’s success is its close relationship with the United Nations and WHO, along with agencies that have a bearing on health such as Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and UNICEF. The vaccine programmes for certain childhood diseases conducted in collaboration with the UN have been a great success and most of these diseases too have been nearly eliminated. Even at the height of the conflict, the vaccine programmes were carried out throughout the country including in the North and the East.

But Sri Lanka cannot afford to rest on its laurels. New threats to public health are emerging all the time. The Zika virus is an example of a disease carrying pathogen that can travel around the world. More than 200 cases of Zika infection have been reported in neighbouring Singapore, just a few months after it was first reported in South America. Sri Lanka must take all possible steps to keep this and other such diseases at bay. Dengue is still prevalent in Sri Lanka and has claimed many lives in several districts. As in the case of Malaria, the adage “prevention is better than cure” applies to dengue – all steps must be taken to destroy mosquito breeding grounds.

It all boils down to education – the other factor in the health equation. In Sri Lanka, health awareness and education begins at a very young age, which has also contributed to the present success story. Programmes such as the free mid day meal to schoolchildren have enhanced their nutritional status. The media, print and electronic, must step in to fill any lacunae in general health education to take Sri Lanka even beyond the Sustainable Development Goals envisaged by the UN in the health arena.

The Island Editorial

Subservience at its worst

10 September 2016

 

It is being argued in some quarters that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s recent comment, in Colombo, drawing a far-fetched comparison between the Vanni war and acts of genocide in Rwanda and Srebrenica has inflicted severer damage on Sri Lanka’s image than anything else. We are convinced otherwise.

True, the UN Chief should have acted responsibly without making such statements. Had he dared say anything of that nature about the US or any of its allies, he would have been made to rue the day he was born. But, we believe the inability of Sri Lankan politicians to understand what the UNSG said in plain English and the servile manner in which they leapt to his defence have damaged the country’s reputation more than the ill-conceived remark at issue.

The UNSG himself must have lost whatever regard he may have had for this country when he saw the vain attempts being made by the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government to justify his ‘most unkindest cut’. He may not have expected the government worthies to be so subservient and take it lying down; he may have thought they would comprehend the gravity of what he said and respond to it. He must be thinking this is a land of morons or, more appropriately, a land governed by a bunch of morons.

Not even Minister Dr. Harsha de Silva and Deputy Minister Karunaratne Paranavithana—two of the few politicians thought to be unaffected by retarded cognitive development, which is common among Sri Lankan politicians—have been able to figure out what the UNSG has actually said. Sadly, they, too, have sought to defend the indefensible in the most unspeakable manner. Is it that they are acting dumb as they believe where ignorance is bliss ‘tis folly to be wise? Or, are they going out of their way to ingratiate themselves with the western governments and the UN bigwigs for reasons best known to themselves?

Both Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe and Deputy Minister Paranavithana have sought to have us believe that the UNSG’s remark should not be taken seriously, much less reacted to, because it is not in the script of his speech. We are intrigued. If so, will they explain why the government transferred Secretary to the Ministry of Public Administration and Management J. Dadallage on the basis of a verbal statement he made. He said he saw no difference between the Samurdhi handouts and the distribution of sil redi, for which some grandees of the previous government have been hauled up before courts. The top bureaucrat was subsequently hounded out of his job though he had not expressed his views in writing. The Supreme Court once reacted to a nasty remark Minister S. B. Dissanayake had made while speaking at a political event about one of its judgments, deemed it an affront to the dignity of the judiciary and threw him behind bars. What would the government pundits, defending the UNSG, say to this?

Paranavithana has said the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration is wary of confronting the UNSG on the remark at issue as it does not want to antagonise the UN. This kind of skewed logic reminds us of a foreign judge who had the audacity to say something to the effect that if rape was inevitable the victim should stop resisting and come to terms with it; he got into trouble for saying that, and quite rightly so.

Unless the government plucks up the courage to impress on the so-called international civil servants that they must not trifle with a member state in this despicable manner, there will be many more of them who want to take a leaf out of the UNSG’s book.