Winning isn’t everything

The Economist: THE Australians are not the only ones to feel chuffed by the Gold Coast winning its bid to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Most Sri Lankans, whose country competed for the event with none of the infrastructure in place, are beyond relieved.

So roundly have the media criticised Sri Lanka’s failed attempt to secure the event that many are left wondering who the devil wanted these games in the first place; but more on that later.

Even habitual backers of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s administration, like nationalist The Island newspaper, took a swipe at the Government’s misadventure. Send the Australians a big thank-you card, its editor advised, for having saved Sri Lanka from disaster.

Public sentiment wasn’t far different. An online opinion poll published in the Sunday Times newspaper saw 81.4% of respondents say they were happy Sri Lanka did not win the bid, with only 18.6% feeling the opposite way.

On 11 November, members of the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) meeting in St Kitts voted in favour of Australia playing host to the 2018 edition, in the Gold Coast. But Sri Lanka’s defeat did not come cheap. Indeed, so much money was lavished on its proposal alone that opposition parties feared an economic collapse might have been imminent, were the bid to have succeeded.

First, the Government paid $ 2.6 m up front to “pmplegacy,” a London-based international management consultancy, to administer the bid. Millions were also spent on incidentals like foreign trips, hosting visiting CGF delegations, chopper rides to and from the proposed venue—faraway Hambantota, on Sri Lanka’s southern coast—and carousing the night away in St. Kitts. The Government claimed the money came primarily from the private sector, but then mystifyingly declined to name the contributors.

In any case, a mammoth delegation left for the Caribbean a full week ahead of the CGF vote. Aboard the chartered plane were sports personalities, a reigning beauty queen and a former-beauty-queen-cum-actress-turned-politician. And mingling with the politicians, officials and journalists were assorted and sundry businessmen, chefs and a cultural troupe. There enjoyed sing-alongs on board. At St. Kitts, they checked into four-star hotels.

The Sunday Times reports that among the 400 who were present, from 70 sports federations of Commonwealth countries, a full 160 were from Sri Lanka. Only a mere 20 came from Australia. Sri Lanka’s pièce de resistance was a cultural show and dinner at which a specially constructed bar with a thatched roof offered “an unending flow of local arrack and toddy”.

The Gold Coast Bulletin reported two days before the decision was made that Sri Lanka was “partying like it has won the right to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games”.

Despite eventful last-minute lobbying — and a close and worthy contest — Hambantota received just 27 votes while games-ready Gold Coast was endorsed by 43 CGF members. Where Commonwealth politics are concerned, it was hardly fair.

 It will be the fifth time Australia is honoured with the games. But back in Sri Lanka, pragmatists were heaving a sigh of relief.

The bid to play host to the games in deeply rural Hambantota was based on nothing more than an elaborate dream. The proposal was conjured by Namal Rajapaksa, the President’s sporty eldest son, who is being groomed for leadership. Sri Lankans know well now that what the Namal wants, Namal gets. The CGF described the bid as “largely virtual”.

Which was a polite way of saying that, in its current incarnation, Hambantota is not a terribly happening place.

There is little on offer but for a rarely-used cricket stadium, a new port that receives more pedestrian sightseers than it does ships, an oil-tank farm and a rapidly rising international airport with one of the largest runways in the world.

At least two of these — and soon no doubt the airport, once it is completed — are named after President Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose constituency happens to be Hambantota (so is Namal’s). And at least three of Hambantota’s notable projects are financed through expensive Chinese loans.

In September 2011, the CGF determined that to stage the games in the Gold Coast would present a low risk to their success while to hold them in Hambantota would pose “a medium to high risk”. But Sri Lanka fought back with the promise of heavy — very heavy — investment. Just about everything was to be built from scratch by 2016, including resorts, an athletics stadium, 18-hole golf course and media centre.

Opposition parties fumed at the time. Hambantota was clearly chosen for this ambitious and ultimately futile project solely because it was the Rajapaksa family’s home base. As journalist Ranga Jayasuriya wrote in a column, “There is no better place than the backward, deep south to test the waters for a dynastic succession”.

A Marxist party, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, warned that Sri Lanka’s economy would crash as Greece’s did after the 2004 Olympics. Tamil parties asked why so much money was going towards turning Hambantota into a “futuristic city” when there was not enough to resurrect the war-shattered north. But the criticism hasn’t hurt the Government. Indeed, it has pledged to continue with transforming Hambantota into a sports hub, despite the defeat.