Following President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s inspiring speech:

Boost for Sri Lanka’s 2018 bid to host C’wealth Games

Dinesh WEERAWANSA reporting from Australia

Perth - President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s speech at the Sports Breakfast hosted by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on the theme ‘Sports as a Unifier in the Commonwealth’ at the Golden Ballroom of the Pan Pacific Perth Hotel was commended by many sports and political leaders, apart from the international media.

Many felt that Sri Lanka’s Hambantota 2018 Bid to host the Commonwealth Games received a tremendous boost after President Rajapaksa’s inspiring speech yesterday.

Australia’s premier news agency AAP, the Australian Associated Press said that the “Sri Lankan President has out-manoeuvered Prime Minister Julia Gillard” over duelling bids for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

In a news despatch from the Western Australian capital titled, “Sri Lanka outflanks Gillard on Games bid”, the AAP said that President Rajapaksa, whose country is also hosting the next CHOGM in 2013, used his 10-minute speech to make a concerted pitch on behalf of his nation.

In the audience were the bid teams for Hambantota and Australia’s Gold Coast, and members of the 71 Commonwealth Games Associations who have a vote at the decisive CGF Meeting scheduled to be held in St Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean on November 11.

After Gillard referred to the Gold Coast, which competes with Hambantota, as having put in a bid, saying Australia would host an “outstanding games”, it was President Rajapaksa who made an outstanding speech, saying that Sri Lanka wanted to mirror Malaysia, which hosted the Games in 1998 and witnessed massive economic expansion in the following years.

President Rajapaksa said that hosting the 2018 Commonwealth Games would be a life-changing event in Sri Lanka’s history and that would also allow reconciliation among the people and the reconstruction of infrastructure.

He pledged to complete building all accommodation and sporting facilities by 2015, saying that the bid had his government’s “highest backing”. He congratulated the Australian Premier for her country’s contribution to sport worldwide and the Games in particular.