Dead end to Presidential Sports Awards?
View(s):The Presidential Sports Awards (PSA), an annual and an uninterrupted event until the death of Saman Amarasinghe, the Chairman of the award ceremony committee, has brought a grinding halt entirely because no successor has been appointed.
The 2020 edition of the PSA, recognising sportspersons of 2019 was all set to go. However, due to the tragic death of Amarasinghe and lack of succession planning, the ceremony is yet to be revived.
Before the tragic incident though, the awards ceremony had actually stopped after the resignation of the deceased. But Amarasinghe had been diligent in his duties, all arrangements were finalised before he relinquished his job. The arrangements also included finalising the awards and nominations list.
But, again, when he was recalled and reinstated to the job, Amarasinghe had then repeated the process of organising everything and had even booked BMICH. Since his demise, no replacement had been appointed, and consequently, the function had been neglected.
The Sunday Times, however, found that the Secretary to the Ministry of Sports had planned to host 2019 and 2020 awards together, but in 2020, more or less no sporting events had taken place, owing to the pandemic. Hence and if at all, the awards functions would only cover the 2019 winners, many of them, the South Asian Games winners.
Along with South Asian Games winners, former cricket captain Michael Tissera is also listed in the lifetime achievement, under which he is one of the 15, but all have been placed on waiting lists with the function unlikely this year too.
However, a Facebook post of Amarasinghe, now meta, dated July 21 read, “To all nominated awardees of Presidential Sports Awards 2019 – The Presidential Sports Awards 2019 will be held under the distinguished patronage of His Excellency President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Hon. Minister of Sports of Namal Rajapaksa in October/November 2021 at BMICH”.
Questions have also been raised whether the state is still eager to stall the continuation of this, with many other awards ceremonies maintaining consistency.