The spokesman of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Oleh Voloshyn, has probably never heard that well-known quote. Giving his ministry’s line on the growing calls in Europe for a boycott of the Euro 2012 championship in Ukraine, he insisted recently that politics should have nothing to do with sport.
Maybe it shouldn’t, but nevertheless it does: Football is a game that has always involved more passions than just those generated by 90 minutes of action on the field. When Glasgow rivals Rangers and Celtic meet, ugly tribalism and festering religious bigotry, lingering still from ancient battles, also attend the game. At the international level, old conflicts between contending nations are often recalled, (if only in jest), as exemplified by the famous quote of sports reporter Frank McGhee, who wrote on the eve of the 1966 World Cup final between England and Germany that “If, on the morrow, the Germans beat us at our national game, we’d do well to remember that, twice this century, we’ve beaten them at theirs."
So the Foreign Ministry shouldn’t really be surprised that the internal politics of their country look set to play a part in the upcoming European football championship that Ukraine is co-hosting with Poland.
Despite the Ukrainian authorities’ insistence that the prosecution of former Premier Yulia Tymoshenko is a purely legal matter, many politicians in Europe continue to see her treatment as a blatant example of political foul play. It’s little wonder many have declared they won’t be coming to Ukraine for Euro 2012 after all.
For instance, European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has said she will boycott Ukraine’s opening ceremony for Euro 2012, because "you cannot close your eyes on human rights, even during a great sporting celebration."
By managing to kick what had been a bad case of political persecution deep into the territory of a human rights abuse issue as well, Tymoshenko has employed some cunning tactics. That senior EU officials are now describing the former Ukrainian premier’s plight in human rights terms, and are focused on the medical aspect of the Tymoshenko case, rather than the legal one, is testament to her team’s superb media strategy.
It’s been several months, and yet still nobody knows the exact nature of Tymoshenko’s health problems (though she is rumored to be suffering from a herniated spinal disc), showing that the former premier understands well that it’s always wise to keep everyone guessing about your true state of fitness for as long as you possibly can.
Add to that the prison authorities’ clumsy (and allegedly bruising) attempts to hospitalize the opposition leader, and her hunger strike in protest at the claimed physical assault, and you get very disturbing picture of the political process in Ukraine today. However distorted that picture may or may not be, EU leaders are more used to seeing such alleged cases of political persecution in Belarus, or Burma, or China, rather than Ukraine.
And even if Tymoshenko has in fact been feigning injury to win free kicks against her opponents, it matters little, since the current administration appears to be intent on scoring own goals anyway.
Not content with confining their chief political rival to the sidelines ahead of the vitally important game of the parliament elections in October, the authorities are bringing further criminal cases against Tymoshenko – cases that could well result in her being given extra time.
You have to wonder why they bother. Even if Tymoshenko were to be declared fit and sent onto the field today, there is now no time left for her to pull together an opposition squad capable of presenting a serious challenge to the party of power this autumn. Instead, the repeated hard tackles inflicted on the top player for the opposition must, in the eyes of EU officials, look more and more like a dirty and petty game of political revenge.
Ordinary football fans, meanwhile, need not fear that the Euro 2012 event itself will sustain any serious injury, even if many of Europe’s top politicians decide to give it the boot. There is no chance of any European national football team actually withdrawing from the championship in protest at the Yanukovych administration’s persecution of the opposition – football is, after all, much, much, much more important than politics. But the absence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron or French President Francois Hollande from the VIP boxes of Ukraine’s shiny new arenas this summer will certainly put paid to the government’s chances of winning a few badly needed image points by playing host to the stars of Europe’s top political division.
It will then be obvious even to dispassionate spectators just how far Ukraine has fallen in the European rankings since Viktor Yanukovych won the presidency in 2010. On form like this, the country could even end up in the same league as Belarus.
Euan MacDonald is a former editor of the Kyiv Post.
