Ranjith Bandara
Sport, with its boundaries but endless borders and its central component in driving home fair-play offering no hiding place for rule breakers, came full circle in Sri Lanka in a way that nothing else had displayed or succeeded in achieving.
On Friday sport was at its noble best as it brought down a man who was touted as the number one corruption buster in the country but according to law makers in the supreme legislature was not fit to be in such a position to fight the good fight.
He failed to keep his forefinger where it should have been, on the desk at a crucial time when the rest of the members in his Committee on Public Enterprising (COPE) that is tasked with probing financial misdeeds in public, were questioning corruption tainted cricket officials.
And so did Ranjith Bandara, himself a Member of Parliament, that set up COPE in 1979, take his place in history for failing to live up to public expectations and gesturing to under-probe cricket officials with his finger on his lips that Opposition law makers charged prompted them (cricket officials) to be cautious in their utterances.
Although Bandara denied the charges, Opposition Parliamentarians thought otherwise.
“COPE has lost its credibility and should not be allowed to proceed any further,” declared former Sports Minister Dayasiri Jayasekera in Parliament, one day before the Speaker of the House suspended it.
The corruption-tackling COPE became a household name and the subject it was dealing with became one of the most anticipated platforms in the country as powerful and influential figures were brought before it and its serving head Bandara seen as a cut-above the rest.
But sport, which unlike politics is played out in the open for everyone’s scrutiny, stood up for all its values as it no-balled and red-carded the manner in which non-players who in cricket parlance could not play with a straight bat attempted to undermine the norms of fair-play.
