Kumar Sangakkara wins LMD’s SLOTY award
Pioneering business magazine LMD announced yesterday that Kumar
Sangakkara is its Sri Lankan Of The Year (SLOTY) for 2011.
The magazine’s December edition, which will be released today, says
that “the celebrated cricket captain has charmed an entire nation with
his heroics on the field and charisma off it.”
In a tribute to Sangakkara in LMD’s December Cover Story, former UN
Secretary-General contender and highly respected diplomat Jayantha
Dhanapala
– who was LMD’s 2006 SLOTY – writes: “He is an inspirational national
figure, leading us on the road from reconciliation to rebuilding a new
nation on a solid foundation of values drawn from our rich history as
well as from modern democratic concepts...”
Asked what his message to the people of our land is vis-a-vis
national unity is, in an exclusive interview in LMD, the man himself
states: “Lessons of the immediate past have been graphic, impacting both
the majority and the minority, irrespective of caste, creed, race or
religion.
These lessons belong to all of us, lessons we must understand and use
to embrace and foster in each and every one of us. Our sense of unity
must come from tolerance, understanding and love, without which future
reconciliation will be difficult.
Implementation of policies and development is useless if we don’t
have a sense of unity that lives within the people.”
”On a daily basis, we need to teach our children and future
generation of the horrors of division and the wonders of unity.
To sow these seeds in young minds are important, as they need to see
people beyond the petty labels we’re so good at pasting on each other.
The message we send them should be exemplified by the way we live and
the way we act, not simply in words but in really walking the talk. This
is the true step we take towards development... So the message is to
understand, love and foster this sense of ‘Sri Lankanness’...”, he adds.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa won the award in 2009 for bringing the
26-year-old war to an end, whilst Muttiah Muralitharan was LMD’s SLOTY
last year – for his efforts on the field and for being a torchbearer of
national unity in times gone by. Sangakkara is LMD’s 17th SLOTY, the
first being the late Lakshman Kadirgamar in 1995. |