Football in troubled times

Wednesday, 14 July 2010 00:43 Mizzima News

As Nelson Mandela was introduced prior to the kick-off of the 2010 World Cup finals, the assembled crowd in the heart of Kathmandu erupted into applause – even as Nepal continues to reel in the face of impunity and political paralysis. Fifteen years after the historical 1995 rugby World Cup hosted by post-apartheid South Africa, the football World Cup finals were in a sense viewed as cementing the spectacle of sport as a unifying phenomenon.

It is a pleasant sounding hypothesis, but for it to prove accurate the necessary reforms within society must first be enacted.

This year, viewers were told how for countries such as strife-ridden Honduras, football could serve to go some distance in healing national wounds – it patently did not. Meanwhile, the first football match ever shown in real-time inside North Korea – presumably to ramp-up national pride – resulted in the 7-0 drubbing of the North Korean side by Portugal. Kim Jong-Il could not have been pleased.

Now, Burma’s football association is drawing attention to itself as the chosen hosts of the upcoming Asian Football Confederation President’s Cup, the selection somehow conferring further legitimacy upon the blighted country and its leadership.

The visiting list of participants for the finals, however, reads as a who’s who list of troubled countries – Kyrgyzstan’s Dordoi-Dynamo, Turkmenistan’s HTTU Ashgabat and Tajikistan’s Vakhsh Qurghonteppa are also taking part. For the Kyrgyz team, they travel to Burma as the country continues to broil in the flames of violent ethnic clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks that have displaced tens of thousands. For Turkmenistan, the 2006 death of self-styled leader for life Sapamurat Niyazov has done precious little to liberate the lives of the impoverished Central Asian state.

True this is a club tournament, as opposed to the national stage of such events as the World Cup, but international football competitions are still highly political events; to this, the Burmese regime is correct in assessing a certain degree of political capital gained from being chosen as the host venue.

But alas, the celebration of international sport as a benchmark of socio-political modernity is best understood as representative of a country and its constituent authority’s immediate and relative acceptance – both internationally and domestically.

While the regime may be able to cling to minimal international plaudits gained as a result of hosting the competition, the country’s ills remain remarkably unaddressed, the state’s leadership as nationalistically paranoid as ever. A recent boxing contest between Burmese and Japanese pugilists had to be fixed so that a minimum number of Burmese fighters, the host country, would emerge victorious.

The fact is, until the government in Naypyitaw can guarantee a degree of reforms directed at embracing democratic modernity and meeting the needs of the populace, the celebration of sport at the national level will fail to live up to the international recognition that can be won when citizens celebrate as equal members with a shared vision of the country’s future.

Football in troubled times is just that – football against a tumultuous background. And September’s AFC President’s Cup in Burma will undoubtedly provide yet one more opportunity to gaze upon the well-documented troubles underlying the Burmese state.