With Qatar in the hot seat again over bribery allegations related to its 2022 World Cup bid, many questions are being raised internationally about the fate of the country’s hosting rights.
Officials in some nations, including the UK and Australia, are already indicating that they wouldn’t mind hosting the tournament in the event of a revote.
But going against the grain, one sports columnist is urging politicians to pause for a moment and consider the implications of their words. In a new post, Associated Press writer John Leicester argues:
“They should consider how public opinion in the Middle East might react if Qatar was shamed in the eyes of the world by being stripped of the tournament, especially if evidence to justify such a financial, geopolitical, legal, social and sporting earthquake is anything less than rock-solid.
They also should consider whether pressure on FIFA to ditch Qatar is based on an abundance of cold, hard facts and incontrovertible proof of Qatari wrongdoing that makes FIFA’s 2010 vote for the Gulf nation invalid. Or is Western snobbery, jealousy of Qatar’s wealth and disdain — verging on borderline racism at times — for what is a new frontier in the global spread of football also playing a role, even a minor one, here?”
Here in Doha, many residents have echoed similar questions about why exactly Qatar is in the spotlight. On Twitter, for example, some said:
The question is, do people really care about Qatar being a better country and improving or is the goal to simply hurt Qatar?
— Khalifa Al Haroon – Mr. Q (@iloveqatar) June 2, 2014
https://twitter.com/natalthani/status/473480149602537472
The world promotes 'innocent until proven guilty'. But for Qatar it was "guilty until proven innocent. Double standards.
— Khalifa Al Haroon – Mr. Q (@iloveqatar) June 2, 2014
https://twitter.com/Brydon_N/status/473374869716205568
Whatever the reasons for focusing attention on Qatar, the evidence of vote-buying nonetheless seems quite compelling, Leicester adds.
However, he said that no revote can be justified until Qatar’s bid is properly investigated. Currently, that has been the main role of Michael Garcia, FIFA ethics chief.
He has been traveling and interviewing officials and other stakeholders about Qatar and Russia’s bids for more than a year, and plans to submit investigation results this summer.
However, the Guardian reports that Garcia has declined this week to examine the “millions” of documents the Sunday Times said it obtained from a FIFA insider, prompting some concerns about the fairness of the investigation.
Thoughts?
