Ceylon Today Editorial

Corruption in world bodies not helping local cause

13 May 2017

Yes, the Minister of Sports spoke out recently and told the world that he is not interested in politicizing sports. He said the running of sports is in the hands of the federations or sports bodies that handle it. We have explained about how sports was run successfully by the bodies that were in charge and did justice to their responsibilities. Today, are these people who are in charge, doing a similar job? This is the sixty four hundred dollar question needing answers quickly, as sport is just hanging by rusty hinges that are likely to fall off any time.

We have spoken of sports in the days of Duncan White and Susanthika Jayasinghe and how these two were able to get those medals; both of them were part of the forces and had the facilities to get to the top at national level. From there onward, it was their own initiative that made things happen. When Jayasinghe ran there was the Sports Ministry and its officials who were in control of operations but the then Sports Minister stood by the athlete and arranged to give her the requirements to go for foreign training.

During the period when sports were not being supervised by the government servant, there was no power struggle stopping the smooth sailing of sports in Sri Lanka (Ceylon then). In the period in question world sports had not attracted sponsors to be involved; this was due to the fact, sports especially the Olympics was only for amateurs. With the improvement of communications around the world, helping sports gets on the world stage and became an attractive enough commercial venture. It was at this stage Juan Antonio Samaranch got amateurism out of the Olympics by introducing professionals into it, this benefitted the sponsors to get in with their brands donating large amounts of money for the running of Olympics. The NOCs of countries became very powerful with benefits given to them at this same period; nobody could question them. This was due to their voting rights.

This was what ruined the local sports that was under government officials; with NOC getting powerful, they too benefitted. Now, to get back to Sports Minister Dayasiri Jayasekara's speech on not politicizing sports, he can give all kinds of statements but without the introduction of a policy, how can anyone give assurances of sports not being politicized? Although he says he will take care of the policy problem, there are delays.

Although in so many words one could also say that it is the function of the federations to run their sport as would justify it, without a policy how it can be perfected is not very clear. There are many instances of those getting elected to run these institutions holding on to power in manners that benefit them. Of course elections may be fair but once they get into their seats they begin to act as if they own the place. There has been no explanation of Aravinda de Silva's resignation, except for giving the excuse as personal reasons, leaving much grey area around it.

There are many ways of holding on to power and getting it extended with or without support from officials who are supposed to be the watch dogs of sports. For the official, one who seeks power is food for thought. Unlike in the Duncan White era, with the creation of the Sports Ministry, there are many officials who thrive on the fact that there is no policy that has given limitless benefits for their games to be played in the open.

There are ex-sportsmen who have got into the high seat of federations, but have failed to get their sport on the correct path and take it to the international as did cricket. In the Football Federation when a former player was brought in, all eyes were on him to do a better job than what had been going on for years, but alas he too realized at one stage that he had been the pawn to someone in the shadows, wanting to run the sport for whatever was worth to him.

There are many rules and guidelines in the Charter of the Olympics too, which speaks of fairness to sportspeople when running sports without political interference. But in today's context, even the professional athletes' involvement in sport keep many sportspeople away from the limelight due to the level of corruption that has engulfed the events on the international stages such as Olympics and Football World Cup. This is what gives the local minister the bailout line and the NOC is the cause of many a problem in local sports.