NOC elections postponed to December 2016?
The chances are that the elections of the National Olympic Committee (NOC) will only take place in December 2016. This is the opinion of the NOC chief Hemasiri Fernando.
Director General Ruwanchandra
NOC elections are due to take place once in four years, after the staging of the Olympic Games. In Sri Lanka, however, NOC elections have not been held for six years.
The last occasion when the NOC elections took place was in 2009. Now the Sports Law has been amended according to International Olympic Committee (IOC) regulations and the chances are that the elections will take place before December 31, 2016.
The amended draft of the Sports Law is now ready and will be forwarded to the IOC in the near future and when the blessings of the IOC are received it will be put before the Cabinet to be gazetted.
All these transactions will take about two months. The 24 sports associations attached to the National Olympic Committee will have to hold their elections after that the new officials will have voting rights to elect members to the NOC.
All these proceedings will only be completed in April-May next year. Then the Olympic Games will take place in Brazil from August 5 to 21 next year and the local NOC elections are bound to be delayed again.
If all the regulations are in order, the NOC elections are scheduled to take place after the Brazil Olympic Games. The NOC elections were due to take place in December 2013 and nominations were called but since the elections were not according to IOC regulations the IOC ordered that the elections should be postponed by six months.
Due to this setback the NOC elections had kept on dragging.
Hemasiri Fernando
This is the biggest drawback that prevailed over three sports ministers. When the Sunday Times inquired from the Sports Ministry, Director General of Sports K.D.S. Ruwanchandra said that the draft regarding the Sports Law amendments is ready from the Sports Ministry and the NOC and will be released to all national sports bodies and the media shortly.
The names of Minister Dilan Perera, the former Volleyball Federation president and Rohan Fernando of the Sri Lanka Rowing Federation have been nominated to the post of NOC president.
When we inquired from Dilan Perera whether he will contest for the post he declined to comment. Hemasiri Fernando, the present NOC president has indicated that he will not contest for the post again.