It isn’t hard to be cynical about political campaigns. Sometimes, amidst the noise of put-downs, promise-making and outright lying it’s easier, perhaps therapeutic, to make a rush for the sideline, take a seat and turn your back to the commotion.
Here in Canada we’re about a third of the way through one of the longest campaigns in our history. To the south of us the campaigning doesn’t really start or stop—ever—although they’re still in the sometimes slapstick, sometimes absurd part of the November 2016 procedure. It’s not become serious yet.
Then there’s FIFA.
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The global ballot to determine Sepp Blatter’s successor as president (each of the 209 members of world football’s governing body has a vote) will take place next February, and while potential candidates including Diego Maradona and Prince Ali bin Al Hussein have been mulling their prospects only Michel Platini and FIFA vice-president Chung Mong-Joon have formally stepped forward. (Both have yet to file the necessary paperwork, due four months before the election.)
Platini, the front-runner and long-assumed heir to Blatter’s crown, enters the process with a reputation for courting the lower-profile constituents of UEFA, of which he is currently president, and is widely thought to have considerable Asian support already sewn up.
What works against the former France international is the perception that he’s a company man who, according to Chung Mong-Joon, has a “mentor-student” relationship with the now toxic Blatter.
“Michel Platini was a great football player, and he is my good friend,” Chung remarked after announcing his candidacy for FIFA president earlier this month. “His problem is he does not seem to appreciate the seriousness of the corruption crisis at FIFA.”
Chung, incidentally, also seemed pulled into the corruption quagmire that sunk Blatter when unconfirmed reports surfaced Monday and suggested an inappropriate attempt to boost his native South Korea’s bid for the 2022 World Cup that was supposedly being investigated by FIFA’s Ethics Committee.
The 63-year-old was quick to reject the allegations and on Wednesday went so far as to claim FIFA, itself, was attempting to sabotage his campaign.
“There are increasing signs that the election is deteriorating into a typical FIFA affair with selective leaks of so-called ‘confidential’ information, accusations of wrong-doing based on ‘unconfirmed reports,’ un-named ‘sources’ and ‘insiders’,” read a statement from his office. “This is not just a matter of who gets elected the next president of FIFA. It is a matter of what kind of FIFA will emerge out of this current crisis.”
Chung, whose farming family famously repaired U.S. army vehicles during the Korean War before building a business empire, insists the FIFA he envisions is one free of corruption and the perception of corruption, and if his words alone aren’t convincing a glance his résumé would seem to bolster them.
Currently serving a seventh term in South Korea’s National Assembly, he is an alumnus of Seoul National University, MIT’s Sloan School of Management and John Hopkins University, from which he earned a PhD in international relations. His 1993 book “The Government-Business Relationship of Japan: A Case Study of the Japanese Automobile Industry” looks at “the role of government in industrial development,” according to Forbes.
He has also established himself as something of a philanthropist and in 2011 donated $500 million U.S. to set up a foundation for disadvantaged children.
That the timing of the bequest coincided with South Korea’s 2012 presidential election wasn’t lost on anyone, however, and that spring Chung filed his registration papers. Interestingly, he later backed out of his party’s primary process after a motion to transfer primary voting power from party members to the general citizenry was scrapped.
Not surprisingly, Chung’s political adversaries have repeatedly tried to discredit him, although to this point nothing slung his way has stuck to the slender, greying billionaire who prefers to be called “MJ.” As he wades further into the FIFA swamp, and as his financial and academic records are more closely scrutinized, that may or may not change.
No doubt the extraditions of six football officials to the United States, where they would face corruption charges, would buttress the cause of a self-proclaimed change agent, if for no other reason than they would return the disgraces of the current FIFA regime to public attention.
For better or worse the outside involvement of organizations such as the FBI and United States Attorney General’s Office will be part of what pulls the FIFA corruption narrative forward in the short term, and it follows the upcoming presidential campaign will be pulled along with it.
None of this is fun, and even if Chung is the sort of candidate he marks himself to be he stands little chance of winning. Platini’s courtship of Asia, and the African votes that may well transfer from Blatter to him, will likely see to that, although there’s still plenty of time for the voters to be pulled from one aspirant to the other.
All the while the sideline is more and more appealing, even if standing up and walking either with the force of the pull or against it is inevitable. But not yet.
At the 2012 dOCUMENTA (13) exhibition in Kassel, Germany an installation at the Fridericianum used intentionally provided airflow to guide art-goers from one gallery to the next. (Entitled I Need Some Meaning I Can Memorize (The Invisible Pull), by Ryan Gander, it is brought to life by novelist Enrique Vila-Matas in “The Illogic of Kassel”.)
The invisible pull that drags time along with it—what Tolstoy might have called “the forces of history”—is also at work in FIFA. It will use villains and heroes and cheaters and saints as it goes, but in the end it will arrive where it was always going to, where the motion that is the history of FIFA pulled it to be at a certain moment.
We know that because now is one of those moments, even if it’s not yet the decisive one. Maybe the sideline, the seat and the turned back can last a little while yet.
Jerrad Peters is a Winnipeg-based writer. Follow him on Twitter