November 16, Colombo (LNW): Dullas Alahapperuma served as the Sports Minister during Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency. The last South Asian Games featuring Sri Lanka took place under his tenure. Despite their strong performances at the event, the athletes began suffering from serious illnesses while in Sri Lanka.
Many succumbed to dengue. Dallas walked into the Sugathadasa Sports Hotel where they were staying and realized the potential for mosquitoes to breed there. But by the time it was repaired, many things that should have happened had already been completed. Then Namal Rajapaksa was appointed as the Minister of Sports. Familiar with the playing field, Namal started strong but later faltered, influenced by false flatterers and a tendency to undervalue the achievements of his predecessors.
Beyond the prominent rugby clubs in Sri Lanka, there was a president who rose through Peterson and made significant contributions to rugby, cricket, and football in Sri Lanka, as well as to Kure Park Ground. The sense of fear and inferiority experienced by certain individuals within the main sports clubs quickly reached the minister. Later, in the face of the Sri Lanka’s Revolutionary “Aragalaya”, rugby was banned when he left the sports ministry, but the court held the next official election and allowed Sri Lanka rugby to continue.
Namal, who initially acted based on his own views, allowed political fame and significant achievements for the country to slip through his fingers in many instances. He adopted a dictatorial approach, and when he left, the sport was left in a tangled mess, much like a ball of yarn.
Roshan Ranasinghe, who came after that, instead of the experience of Polonnaruwa, he was a worker with a desire to pretend to be Colombo. He viewed his wealth, along with the power of his ministerial position, as a sword to protect the authority of the government. Due to his actions with this sword, cricket, rugby, and football faced international bans, affecting all three sports that had been receiving support for the development of Sri Lankan sports. It was also significant that some of his appointees, along with those who were very close to him, gained the power to control the game according to their own interests.
Ultimately, Ranil Wickremesinghe decided to remove Roshan from the position of sports minister, as he had been acting like the king’s bodyguard, wielding the sword as though it were poised to strike both him and the entire sport of the country.
Harin, who came in afterward, had a lot of work to do. It was similar to how Ranil ended the oil queues, as an effort to remove the bans that had been imposed on the game. His primary responsibility was to negotiate an agreement with the ICC to ensure there would be no political interference in reviving cricket, an income-generating institution crucial for fulfilling the country’s various needs.
Additionally, there was an issue where the Sports Ministry did not receive the necessary allocation for the number of matches required for athletes to represent the country in the Olympics.
He patiently addressed its fundamental issues and moved forward. But Rugby, which has its own bond, is currently in the legal limbo due to its entanglement with the upper branches of the problem. It was because, as someone with a close relationship to rugby and a background in playing the sport, he aimed to make a difference for those in his social class.
Although he tried to hide it, it came out in some of his statements. While he left, the Director General of Sports seemed to be shoved into the water by the president of the dissolved rugby administration.
Harin banned netball as well as rugby and turned the banned administration into a funny council that gathers people to support the administration. Later, he was completely innocent of the death, and ran away, leaving the Director General of Sports’ fingerprints all over the matter.
Now, these four ministers have faced rejection from the people in two ways during the election. Two have been defeated, and although the other two may enter parliament through the national list, the political parties they represented have suffered a severe defeat at the hands of the people. All three of them entered parliament representing the Popular Front, which had achieved a historic victory in 2020.
Of those three, only Namal Rajapaksa, who inherited the leadership of the party from his father, remains today. Namal also offered to be the 2024 president. Additionally, Roshan Ranasinghe, who displayed excessive pride during his tenure as Sports Minister, claimed that the reason for his confidence was that a fortune teller had told him he was destined to become the President of the country.
In that way, he formed a new party and entered the presidential race. Although he had previously seen Arjuna Ranatunga, who had influenced many of the issues he faced with cricket, alongside Roshan Ranasinghe at the time of the party’s formation, Arjuna was later seen on a different stage. In the end, he left Polonnaruwa, where he had sought the vote, and Kalutara constituency Dilith Jayaweera’s party ran, but he lacked enough votes to enter parliament.
Although Harin gave up his dream of Gampaha and returned to Badulla to contest, Chamara Sampath was chosen to replace him in the single seat that Harin’s party won in Badulla. All three former sports ministers approached their work by attempting to answer questions in a way that made it seem as though the person asking didn’t know, while subtly emphasizing that they themselves had the knowledge.
The significance lay in recognizing the ignorance of those ministers. Dullas Alahapperuma had the ability to navigate through tricky situations with ease, a skill this group lacked. But this does not align with the approach that was supposed to address the issues within the game. Instead, it was based on their personal likes and dislikes.
It would be a significant loss for the president, who hails from Thambuttegama, if he does not find someone capable of properly understanding Thambuttegama and assessing the situation relative to that area. Therefore, the mindset that only high-class clubs are sports clubs should be shifted, and sports administration should evolve into a more widespread and decentralized aspect of human society.
Unfortunately, there is no need to discuss the four individuals who were appointed as sports ministers in Sri Lanka over the past four years. The decisions they made, driven by power, as well as the consistency and flaws in those decisions, can be seen in the political fate they have experienced so far.
All three of them have failed to emerge from the party that contested in the 2020 election. Both are now on the national list. Public trust has been shattered, and confidence has been lost. The fate of the parties they were in, as reflected in the way the votes fell, is not difficult to discern.
*Adapted from original article, “ගෝඨාගේ සිට රනිල් දක්වා සිව් වසක් සිව් දෙනෙක් එක්ක ගත කළ ක්රීඩාව” by Nishman Ranasinghe published on 16/11/2024.
