Ceylon Today Editorial

SLC seems to have problems with selections

28 January 2017

There seems to be a void in the thinking of the members of the Sri Lankan cricket team. Are they all well informed about the rest of the cricketing world and happenings there? For such question to arise one noticeable oddity was the Sri Lankan fear of names of South African cricketers that were given extra space in newspapers. It is easy for scribes supporting South Africa, writing for their newspapers to promote the ingredient disliked by the opponents mostly to get the limelight. It can be very detrimental mostly when it is unknown quantity.

It is an important thing to be aware of the goings on around the sphere where one performs. When visiting overseas to play cricket it is important to get there early and acclimatize to conditions you will be faced with playing there. There will be the weather to think about, the greener pitches to get used to and mostly the men you are about to meet in those games that are to be played on conditions foreign to the visitors.

Think of visiting teams coming down to Sri Lanka and how they feel: They feel unsafe hearing of mystery spinners and the sort in the sub- continent. There was the time when the concept of Test cricket was only known to the Australians and the Englishmen. They both ruled wherever they played the game; it did not matter which foreign soil it was; cricket was home to them.

They knew the intricacies because they were the creators of those and it was easy to bulldoze opponents because they only had the answers. Being so, and being the party who knew what to look for in unknown conditions and whom to speak with to get answers to your questions they were at an advantage. If you look at visiting teams and whom they get close with, that is what is going on, collecting bits and pieces of information.

That is the easy way; others in the history of the game had to learn the hard way. They had to play matches and learn the answers from experience. Each of those countries took time to become champion sides compared to those mentioned above.

That was the situation that prevailed for a long time until the West Indies proved otherwise defeating England in 1950 and getting the better of the Australians in the 1960s. By 1970 the South Africans became the conquerors of the dominating Australians.

The game of cricket, as we all know, has now taken a turn towards another episode that has been rolling out since 1975. Since then the better tuned to Test matches have got a lesser demand promotionally whilst the shorter versions have been given more of a push for their commercial value.

Unlike playing Test cricket the shorter version does not give chances for revival while the game is in progress. So, either you get used to thinking on your feet, or perish not being in awareness. The Lankans who played so much cricket, under all sorts of conditions, starting with pol pithi and kaduru bola, seemed to have had this on their side. They have won both the ICC ODI (1996) and T20 (2011) World cups. Beaten at home by the Aussies, recently, in the shorter version after whitewashing them in the Tests, made the Lankans under rebuilding, to look not likely-winners of their next undertaking, the Tri-nation cup in Zimbabwe.

With the future undertakings with neighbouring South Africa in the horizon it would have given the Sri Lankans the confidence of getting to know conditions to some extent. But, of late the South African cricket which is also going through patches of a troubled cricket environment, and because of it, its complete outlook with the game was unknown. In the recently lost Test series the Sri Lankans were able to come on top with their performances but their lack of experience was showing to a greater extent. The lacking was not limited to the three disciplines and conditions only; there was the lack of being given the proper information. This was even more cause for some rethinking on the selection of players.

Even the South Africans are going through a selection problem both for the Test and shorter versions of the game. They had the lesser experienced side in the Tests, with even the master batsman Amla not looking himself. The century he and Duminy made were given away and the Sri Lankans need to be applauded for that not the South African batters. Sri Lanka was not in full awareness with handling the South African bowling and that caused them collapse. Had the proper selections been made with proper awareness the story would have been different as seen from their performance in the T20s. They have progressed tremendously these last few days with their thinking and performing.

Daily News Editorial

Of fake news and alternative facts

28 January 2017

Unless you were living under a rock for a couple of years, you would have noticed a disturbing worldwide trend called “fake news”. Logic dictates that the two words cannot even be in the same sentence, let alone together because we tend to think that all news is true.

Fake news denotes news items (including video clips and photographs) that have been fabricated skillfully to give the impression that they are true events or statements. This phenomenon came to the fore with the rise of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, where anyone can post anything, only be to seen and shared instantly by millions more. But social media alone cannot be blamed – today’s 24 hour news cycle on TV, radio and the Net should take part of the blame. Indeed, the truth sometimes becomes a casualty of the race to be the “first” among the various media and fake news can sometimes win in the heat of the moment. The term shot into prominence during the US Presidential Election campaign, where Facebook was accused of allowing fake news to dominate the trending topics.

Lest you think fake news is confined to the West, it is very much alive in countries such as ours, where we recently saw a picture of a soldier getting kicked by a man in the street captioned as having been taken in Jaffna. The picture has actually been taken in Bangladesh. But thousands of people instantly believed that the picture depicted a true incident in Sri Lanka. Governments and Internet Service Providers can rarely, if ever, fight back in such instances because of the porous nature of the Internet, where things are often not what they seem.

However, social media sites themselves can and should take up the challenge. Both Facebook and Google are fighting back - Facebook has announced changes to its ‘Trending’ section, which it claims may help prevent the spread of fake news. The updates may “help prevent hoaxes and fake news from appearing in Trending,” Facebook said. Google no longer allows fake news sites to benefit from Google Ads, which deprives them of revenue. Google has banished 200 fake news sites completely.

Scientists have also chipped in, developing a fake news “vaccine”. Researchers at the Cambridge University suggest “pre-emptively exposing” readers to a small “dose” of the misinformation can help organisations cancel out bogus claims. They said “the idea is to provide a cognitive repertoire that helps build up resistance to misinformation, so the next time people come across it they are less susceptible.”

As if fake news was not enough, we also have to contend with the “post-truth”, the Oxford dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2016. The dictionary said the adjective is defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. There is, in fact, an entirely new branch of politics known as “post-truth politics”. Again, this was very much in evidence during the UK’s Brexit referendum campaign and the US Presidential Election campaign. During campaigning for the British EU referendum campaign, Vote Leave made repeated use of the claim that EU membership cost £350 million a week, although it later began to use the figure as a net amount of money sent directly to the EU. Although this was easily debunked officially, both votes and campaigners were emotionally preoccupied to see the truth.

This is not the end. Soon after US President Donald Trump was sworn in, his Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that the crowd “was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period”. This was false and several news organisations pointed that out. He later insisted that “sometimes we can disagree with facts” which is actually true. For example, everyone believes that the Titanic sank after a collision with a massive iceberg to the point where it has become an established fact. But disagreeing with this fact, several researchers recently said the actual cause of the sinking was an onboard fire.

Now an even more intriguing term has come into circulation. Interviewed on Chuck Todd’s Meet the Press show on NBC, Kellyanne Conway, Advisor to President Trump, said Spicer was merely offering “Alternative Facts” about the inauguration crowd. The somewhat Orwellian phrase has since gone on to become a hit, while making George Orwell’s 1984 the best-selling book on Amazon. Interestingly, the only place where “alternative facts” belong is history itself – the ravages of time have obscured many chapters of the past and many alternative theories are available on historic events and people.

The takeaway from all these scenarios is that things cannot always be taken for granted, especially online. It is also up the readers and viewers to think for a moment when they see something that is literally too good to be true. If we are perceptive enough, we can mentally filter fake news and alternative facts. As always, comment is free but facts are sacred.

The Island Editorial

A fox, a tortoise and a president

28 January 2017

 

President Maithripala Sirisena said at Abhayaramaya the other day he had received information that an attempt was being made to file civil action against the bond scam suspects. He had, therefore, decided to appoint a presidential commission to conduct a thorough probe so as to have them dealt with appropriately. The bond thieves have evidently abused public funds by utilizing money belonging to the EPF, state banks etc in an improper manner and making huge profits at the expense of those institutions. Therefore, they must be arraigned on criminal charges and arrested forthwith. We have pointed out in this space many a time that a CID report on the bond scams was referred to the Attorney General (AG) in 2015 and he had recommended civil action.

The UNP would not have promptly referred the COPE report, diluted with footnotes to the Attorney General’s Department, which is an appendage of the government unless it had been confident that an escape route could be opened for the bond thieves via Hulftsdorp. The Joint Opposition (JO) et al finally granted the UNP’s wish at the end of the recent parliamentary debate! The House resolved to refer the COPE report, riddled with holes to the AG, for action.

What parliament has decided by way of bringing the bond thieves to justice reminds us of a children’s story where a wily tortoise escapes a fox, which struggles to break its hard shell, which, it says, can be softened only by being soaked in water. The fox puts the tortoise in a stream and keeps a leg on it to prevent it from fleeing. In the end the victim groans in anguish, claiming that the entire shell, except the area covered by the predator’s leg is weighing down, was soft. The fox lifts its leg and the tortoise makes good its escape. The cantankerous Opposition MPs demanding action against bond thieves have acted like the silly fox and facilitated the UNP’s escape.

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa declared, at Abhayaramaya on Thursday, that a future government under him would have the bond thieves arrested. We bet our bottom dollar that nothing of the sort would happen even if the JO were to capture state power tonight. It is deliberately going slow on the bond scams which alone can be flogged effectively to mobilise people against the government. It does not want to go the whole hog to do so apparently because such action will weaken the UNP and help, albeit unwittingly, strengthen its bête noire, President Sirisena’s position in the government. Had anyone connected to Sirisena been involved in the bond thefts, the Rajapaksas would have held mass rallies one after the other demanding his arrest and the ouster of the President. The JO remains maniacally focused on engineering President Sirisena’s downfall and is ready to forge an alliance even with the devil to achieve that end.

The JVP deprived the country of having one of the best former public officials in Parliament. It appointed as a National List MP respected former Auditor General Sarath Chandrasiri Mayadunne, but he resigned immediately after being sworn in as a lawmaker in 2015 so that Sunil Handunetti, a defeated candidate, could secure the vacant slot. Handunnetti was appointed the Chairman of the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE). Had Mayadune remained in Parliament and been entrusted with that job, there would have been no need for a presidential commission on the bond scams; he would have done a thorough job and nobody would have been in a position to question his integrity or professionalism or the content of the COPE report.

As for the bond scams, President Sirisena has wrong-footed the JO, which has sought to play politics with the issue. The promised presidential inquiry, if properly conducted, will help him kill not just two but three birds with one stone. He will be able to expose the JO’s hypocrisy, tame the UNP, which is trying to undermine his authority and endear himself to the public. All he has to do is to put his executive foot down. He has already impressed the public with progressive moves such as the denial of a second term to former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran despite pressure from the UNP and settling the lottery agents’ dispute.

However, President Sirisena will have to ensure that the money stolen from the workers’ fund and state banks by the bond thieves are recovered with interest and the culprits brought to justice. With people on his side, he will be able to overcome the gnawing sense of insecurity which always troubles incumbent presidents.