Ceylon Today Editorial

Sport has come a long way

04 March 2017

It was Napoleon who called the English a nation of shopkeepers, but the French ultimately followed them to play professional football. The French until 1932 did not have a professional league; it was in around the 1930s the French wanted to have their own professional league. Likewise, the Russians who began their membership in the Olympics in 1911, dissolved the existing Russian Olympic Committee after the revolution and began all over again in the year 1951 as the National Olympic Committee of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

How lucky is the world to have our ancestors to have kept sports going. Looking at those sports of ancient times, how they were played and purposes it served has to have justification of its relationship to the way sports provide today's world with such fun-fare. In a world lacking the use of currency then, the thrill of sport would have yet been felt; its relationship to sports in modern times in a world more involved with money may differ much. For a sport with no belonging or association to money to have grown to one of belonging to people mostly through money, sports' impact would have definitely increased with the passing of time.

The story of the British being shopkeepers would have helped sports of modern times. Betting is as ancient as civilization, cricket was a game that came around in the 16th century and by the 17th century was a well organized game to bet on. By the look of things it may have been the second sport after horseracing to provide betting. Yet it was only meant for the Gentleman. Betting also inspired sport to get organized and in this modern world today with all the electronic gadgetry it has helped to get sports to people's homes. The modern system of getting products and their manufacturers to sponsor these events has made it easy for organizers to provide these services to the people.

Coming down the history of sports and when coming face to face with the modern world, yet, there was no relevance to sport serving purposes of livelihood. When the modern Olympics began it was going to be one involving amateur athletes. This was at a time sports was yet not an area thought of as money making. But, yet there was a huge impact it made on the wealthy, who craved to have their lot grow.

Even in the times of the Roman culture under the dictators there were sports and it served the leadership the chance to show off its power against those bent on fighting the injustices of politicians in those times. These men who were imprisoned for treason were made to provide the dictator with the chance to get them fight each other to death while they indulged in fun and games. There were no losers in this world and heroes preferred to die free than be slaves under villains.

This is the history we in Sri Lanka have to undertake in education. There were many who learnt their lessons based on these.

They went on to complete their education in Old Blighty and came back to their motherland as leaders of the left movement and spoke against imperialists, all the while speaking their language and playing their games. Had these spokesmen for socialism taken the key from the Soviets, whom they fondly followed, they could have taken the country's sports like football, which then was known as the poor man's game, right to the top following the British system. But, alas there were some influenced by socialism brought home by leftists, who called for the ban of cricket.

Daily News Editorial

A timely call

04 March 2017

President Maithripala Sirisena has publicly turned down an invitation to open the new “super prison” built at Angunakolapelessa, saying we should strive to create a society where prisons can be closed and more schools opened.

Speaking at a function held at the St. Mary’s College in Kegalle, President Sirisena said even though he had received an invitation to declare the facility open, he declined it because rather than opening a prison it was worth opening a school, which would provide education to children. “We should build a country which opens schools and closes prisons. We should also build a country where people are healthy, and the number of hospitals minimized,” he added.

This is indeed a bold and timely statement, coming at a time when organised crime has raised its ugly head, as seen in the carnage at Kalutara where five suspects and two prison officials were gunned down. As the President alludes, there is a distinct and direct link between education and good conduct.

Aruna Udayashantha alias ‘Ranale Samayan’, the underworld leader who was the main target of the Kalutara attackers was a social misfit who had stayed away from school after O/Ls and ended up in the company of like-minded outcasts. Samayan’s story is generally applicable to most criminals – a truncated education, bad company and a dive into crime that can also end in death. Samayan was only 37 when he was killed.

Education has a major role to play in moulding good citizens. The inculcation of moral values in children must begin at home. Parents must keep a close eye on their children and guide them on the correct path. Unlike in the days gone by, today’s children have access to the Internet and other new media which could sometimes have a corrupting influence on the growing mind.

Schools and places of worship are the next most important components in the fight against crime. School and religious school teachers should play a greater role in imparting moral values on the younger generation. Indeed, many experts say that distancing ourselves from places of worship has become a major cause for the moral decay seen in contemporary society. In earlier times, there was a tight bond between places of worship and the village, which is no longer the case now. In this context, the Government’s emphasis on religious education and the requirement of mandatory education for 13 school years are praiseworthy.

It is also vital to address one other shortcoming in our education system – thousands of students are left out at O/L and A/L stages without any recourse to higher education. Many students, as exemplified by the case of Samayan, take to the streets and a life of crime afterwards. This situation must be rectified without delay.

The availability of more educational and employment opportunities will veer children away from unsavoury activities. As an aside, it will also change the present “three wheeler culture” where children buy three wheelers just after their studies and enter an unproductive life. Incidentally, three wheelers are also used to commit many serious crimes.

There is also a clear nexus between drugs and crime. Peddling and using drugs itself is a crime, but those who are addicted to narcotics usually take to petty and even organised crime to fuel their addictive habit. The Government has taken many steps to stem the flow of illegal narcotics, but more needs to done. The eradication of the drug menace will go a long way towards creating a crime-free society. The alleviation of poverty is another pillar in the fight against crime, along with education for all.

The President raised a moot point when he suggested that prisons should be closed, because most countries now employ other means of “punishing” wrongdoers. Community service is one such method which is rarely used here. That gives the wrongdoer a sense of belonging to the wider society. Indeed, most of those who engage in a life of crime have a grudge against the society for “neglecting” them. Hence, their anti-social activities.

As the President said at the school event, good people in society must come forward to set the society on the correct path. Their silence could cost the society heavily. He recalled the statement of Martin Luther King: “The greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people”. He said intellectuals and great personalities should work more to suppress the strident clamour of bad people.

That is a major challenge that lies ahead of us. Religious dignitaries and intellectuals should come forward to set on the correct path a society that is now consumed by an all-out desire for “money at all costs”. The relentless pursuit of monetary and material gains at the expense of everything else, sometimes including life itself, is tearing apart the very fabric that binds our society together. Urgent action must be taken to stem this rot before it is too late.

The Island Editorial

When JO pots call UNP kettles black

04 March 2017

 

Joint Opposition (JO) big guns have trained their propaganda cannon on Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake. He is being raked over the coals for a gazette the government has issued on the controversial bond sales, with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s name thereon, about two years after his defeat in 2015. They are threatening to sue Karunanayake, who is daring them to do so. Never a dull moment!

Minister Karunanayake is not fit to hold the finance portfolio and, therefore, he should be appointed the minister of cultural or Buddhist affairs instead, a JO spokesman has recently told the media. Not to be outdone, Karunanayake has gone on the offensive. Let the JO grandees and the Finance Minister fight it out and we don’t intend to get caught in the crossfire. However, we can’t but point out the absurdity of the JO’s call for stripping Karunanayake of his finance portfolio and appointing him either the minister of cultural or Buddhist affairs.

We neither endorse nor dispute the JO’s contention that Karunanayake is a failed finance minister. It is our considered opinion that most finance ministers under successive governments since Independence have been failures. Else, the national economy wouldn’t have been in such a mess today. We are paying for the blunders they and their political masters have made. If the JO really thinks Karunanayake is a failed finance minister how come it wants him to be given some other important portfolio?

One is intrigued. Some of the JO leaders come from the so-called Dharmapala belt in the suburbs of Colombo; they make a public display of their love for Buddhism and culture. They never miss an opportunity to wrap themselves in the flag and declare their readiness even to risk their lives to protect Sri Lankan culture and Buddhism. These knights errant in shining armour are often seen tilting at windmills with gung-ho zeal. Do they want the Ministry of Buddhism/the Ministry of Cultural Affairs to go the same way as the Finance Ministry with a minister who, they say, has failed, at the helm of it? They should be asked whether they consider culture and Buddhism less important than finance.

One may recall that the vociferous JO bigwigs who have taken moral high ground and are questioning the eligibility of the ministers of the yahapalana government were silent when Mervyn Silva, accused of attacks on media institutions, was appointed the Media Minister of the Rajapaksa government. A wag says they were so scared of the Rajapaksas that they did not open their mouths even for a tooth extraction at that time. We, the members of the so-called Fourth Estate, had to fight quite a battle to knock some sense into President Rajapaksa. Luckily, sanity prevailed at last. But, Mervyn got another ministry in return for his services as a competent bootlicker. The man notorious for his violent disposition and harassing public officials as well as media persons was appointed the Minister of Public Relations!

One is also reminded how the late President J. R. Jayewardene ‘punished’ the errant members of his Cabinet. A powerful minister found himself up the creek and lost his education portfolio owing to his surreptitious moves to help a girl from a wealthy family enter university through the backdoor to study medicine. He was subsequently given the justice portfolio!

Let the holier-than-thou JO heavyweights be told that they also failed as ministers under the previous regime. It was their collective failure which resulted in the defeat of President Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2015. If they had worked hard, kept their hands clean and lived up to public expectations, they would still have been in power.