DailyMirror Editorial:
The Daily Mirror exclusively reported on Monday the abuse of valuable funds at Sri Lanka Cricket and the manner in which bills were made out for goods and services. This has shocked the country’s financial umpires of umpires, sthe Auditor General.
As we said last week a code of silence had gripped Sri Lanka Cricket and it must be quite refreshing for some optimists that somebody inside the game’s portals is willing to blow the lid or pull the plug on an establishment that was branded by the then sports minister himself as the most corrupt public institution in the country some months ago.
But the question though is will a rotten cricketing establishment come to an end now that the government’s own auditor general has seen stars in attempting to launch the first sparks of an investigation into the bust-up of funds at Sri Lanka Cricket. Going by a sequence of events over the past five years it seems no one will be held accountable and whether the auditor general is wasting his time with cricket is left to be seen.
The case of former sports minister C. B. Ratnayake who lost his job after branding the men currently running Sri Lanka Cricket as the most corrupt in the country, as they sat beside him at his first media appearance, is a classic example that in Sri Lanka there is little or no room for justice to take its course. The justice this country knows is the usual “pull up” and “blasting” and the little boy is back at his old game. Perhaps the skeletons are far too much in the cupboards of the high and mighty.
For the record Sri Lanka must surely have booked its place not just in dubious history but in giving the English language a twist where the word “Interim” is not really interim. In Sri Lanka it means permanency for cover-up of robberies and plundering in style. The people should be made aware that an end to the current Interim Committee (oops permanent committee) will not bring about the desired solution. For when one set is kicked out another unscrupulous set awaits its turn.With the World Cup less than two months away it seems there is better cover for the miscreants before they are thrown out in a classic case of shutting the stable after the horse has bolted. It may be far better to pull down the wall right now at the cost of winning the World Cup (Sri Lanka is not the hottest favourite anyway) than provide cover to the biggest cheats in the world. After all, was it not winning the World Cup in 1996 that also brought about more opportunities for corruption? Apart from one or two, those players who were in World-Cup winning team must be the biggest losers today.