With nothing to showcase to the world and nothing to brag about in the island, Sri Lankan Olympic officials running what is known as the NOC are displaying a kind of intransigence that separates the country from the rest of the world and earning it near pariah status that can snowball into an outcast.
With only one medal in 75 years, Sri Lanka has been a spoilt brat both international and domestically securing both millions in overseas funding and political succor at home until the International Olympic Committee (IOC) put its feet down that enough is enough as it called for the ouster of NOC secretary Maxwell de Silva while six others have been accused of scrounging.
De Silva was ordered by the NOC’s Ethics Committee to step down more than two months ago but his stubbornness has made the country’s Olympic head Suresh Subramanium a mere puppet.
But it took the IOC ten months to step in after the Sri Lankan Parliament branded the NOC the country’s “most corrupt” organization a year after the Legislature drew the same reference to cricket.
In his branding of the NOC, Member of Parliament Chaminda Mayadunne accused its officials of involvement in human smuggling as well as taking custody of international funding meant for the welfare of athletes.
Mayadunne, among other accusations, claimed in Parliament that one of the athletes deprived of funding welfare was Olympic sprinter Yupun Abeykoon while the country’s only Olympic medallist in 75 years, Susanthika Jayasinghe was non-existent to the NOC.
Mayadunne backed his charges with an Audit Report of December 2022 that he said clearly documents the NOC as “the most corrupt”.
He claimed the Audit Report was swept under the carpet and charged that NOC officials were responsible for the decamping of a wrestling official and judo official during the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England in 2022.
In what was a scathing revelation, Mayadunne alleged the NOC also took custody of payments doled out by the Sports Ministry for the Rio Olympics in 2016.
Former Sports Minister Roshan Ranasinghe last year fired a letter to the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) highlighting several misdeeds taking place in the NOC that made all authorities in the country look mere onlookers.
An NOC official told the Sunday Observer that De Silva’s intransigence has made him “the most powerful sports official in the country”.
