Another Promise – Another Lie?

Not for the first time, the Interim Committee for Rugby has announced it would hand over the reins of administration to elected officials by March next year. The course leading up to the transfer were spelled out last week to a morning daily by Dr. Maiya Gunasekera, the IC chief: in mid-January a Special General Meeting of union members is to approve a new constitution crafted by the IC and then the AGM, slated for February 27, will elect a batch of officials who’ll manage affairs in 2010-11.

Promises of a return to an elected system of governance, of course, have been made before – but never honoured. If this time round the IC proves it is as good as its word (though I wouldn’t bet on it), the interim administration would’ve been in office for a shade more than a year – a rather prolonged overstay for a body that was appointed by Sport Minister Gamini Lokuge supposedly to only make arrangements for conducting the 2009 AGM “as soon as possible’’, which translated to time would’ve been a month or two. And that the initial IC composed of only two members (one with no known past links to the game) gave minister Lokuge’s  reason for the February-appointed IC some credibility.
But, as the world knows, it turned out to be only a ruse to get the good game under the control of an IC, a nicely disguised term for government-control. How else can you explain the  extension of the life of the IC for over a year? After all, its record of work for the year has been unspeakable to say the least.  It stumbled from one controversy to another ad infinitum and altercated with just about the entire rugby family, from players, selectors to clubs and provincial unions – even the IRB. The misdeeds of the IC have been documented ad nauseam, so we’ll spare you the ordeal of reviving the bad memories.

Promise to restore elected administration

The fact, however, is that neither a succession of  problems yearlong nor its growing unpopularity deter the IC’s hold on power. Its love of office was too steadfast to let go of, and any notion that a rugby IC is going to be as permanent as the cricket board would’ve been a reasonable assumption. Clearly, we were resigned to the fate of living with a permanent-IC, if such a contradictory description may be permitted. So, the question is why, at this point, a promise is held out to restore an elected administration on a specified day, something that previous promises didn’t either specify at all or stated vaguely, as did Lokuge’s within three months, promise to IRB officials last March.
Dr. Gunasekera promise last week, though, looks the most likely to be honoured – only because the promise comes as a reaction to the ultimatum issued by the IRB at its Congress late last month. A fortnight ago this column discussed the grave consequences our rugby would have to face should the world body’s ultimatum go unheeded. The consequence of ignoring the ultimatum, however, is worth a second dissection, if only to remind you of the seriousness of it all.

Excommunicated

IRB membership is only for elected national unions, and the world body has warned if an elected committee is not in place by March 31, 2010, Sri Lanka is to be excommunicated from the international rugby family – thus forbidding the island contact with any member-nations of the IRB; the sort of isolationism South Africa was subjected to during the days of its apartheid rule. What this means is we can’t play in any overseas international tournament nor can we host any foreign team. Such a scenario will shrink Sri Lanka rugby to a domestic pastime, and, in that situation, you don’t have to be a Nostradamus to predict that our rugby would be only a breath away from the morgue.
Lest our rugby gets into that sort of deep hole, it is well to remember that re-admission to the IRB at some future day when administration changes hands doesn’t happen on application. Our past record of defying IRB laws (which disregard of the ultimatum is) won’t win us many favours – in other words, the IRB will harbour reservations about our re-admission. That apart, the process of re-admission itself is a long drawn-out one, which insiders say can take up to a year.
And international isolation for a year will put back our rugby by a whole lot more years. Not that it fared well under IC stewardship: we fell to eighth in Asian ‘fifteens’ rankings, from fifth in 2006 and tumbled to no. 10 in the Asian sevens list, from fourth in 2007. If anything, what our rugby needs at this critical juncture is a strong and popularly acceptable administration that can rally forces and rescue the game from this crisis. The IC, because it is appointed on the whims of the government, will always lack goodwill and support from the rugby fraternity and so will be a body incapable of pulling the game out of the fire.
Commonsense, thus, says that at least now Dr.  Gunasekera should deliver on his promise to hold the AGM on Feb.27.
But the past’s broken promises nurse suspicion that this one too might end no differently. There are good reasons why nothing might eventuate. For example, the SGM called for mid-January is fraught with pitfalls. The reason for this assembly is to seek approval of the IC-crafted constitutional amendments from the provincially-structured rugby union. No one knows precisely the amendments forwarded to the Attorney General’s office for legal clearance. The amendments were agreed upon at a previous SGM, but provincial unions allege what was on-passed for AG clearance is not the same as those agreed.

Power of provincial unions

Basically, the amendments are designed to increase the voting strength of A division clubs so as to reduce the enormous voting power of the provincial unions. The IC and provincial unions, apparently, had amended the balance of power to a degree agreeable to both, which, perhaps, meant the provincial unions would’ve retained a good deal of its present powers of influence. If, however, the SGM reveals a tampering of the agreed amendment to the detriment of the provincials, an impasse seems inevitable. In other words, the Feb 27 AGM won’t take place – and the IC remains.
An alternative would be to hold the Feb AGM under the old constitution, which, after all, is the one in force presently. Whether recourse to that alternative is to be taken, of course, is for minister Lokuge to decide. He is the creator of the rugby IC. That he is also its greatest defenders is illustrated by his lie to the IRB, last March, that he would hold elections within three months. Whether a man of that attitude would give assent to the abandonment of his own creation is anybody’s guess.
You can’t rule out the possibility that the government, as a policy, wants to control sport. The Cricket Board, of course, has been under interim committees since 1999 and successive governments have appointed men of their choosing to run the affairs of the game. The present rulers are no exception. ICs came to rugby just about a year ago, but its influence on the game has been quite dramatic. It had ridden rough shod over tradition to have its own way – to the extent of even favouring a powerful official’s son to be national captain, opposing the national selectors’ choice.
A continuation of this sort of devil-may-care rule is the price to be paid should the provincial unions choose to reject the new constitution just so that they may wield the power they’ve grown accustomed to – forgetting that without annual IRB funding (withheld presently because the IRB doesn’t recognize the IC)  they are dead. Their revival will depend on the extent to which they’d be willing to compromise to resolve the balance of power issue. What must be their foremost objective is to make the Feb.27 AGM a reality – rather than give another excuse for another year of IC rule, which is another way of saying, the death of the game.