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EDITORIAL: Beijing 2008: Let the politics begin

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) drew criticism on Wednesday for comments he made a day earlier that, if elected president, he would consider boycotting the Beijing Olympics if the crisis in Tibet worsened.

Even if Ma's original statement -- since qualified with two conditions -- was a throwaway comment designed to make him sound tough on China ahead of tomorrow's presidential election, he should at least be commended for suggesting things that other governments around the world seem frightened even to mention.

Some of the criticism leveled at Ma -- such as that of Sports Affairs Council Chairman Yang Chung-ho (楊忠和), who accused Ma of flip-flopping on Olympic issues -- was justified. In April last year, while Ma was busy slamming the government over its decision to bar the Olympic torch from Taiwan, he said that allowing athletes to participate was the "most important thing."

Meanwhile, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh's (謝長廷) remark that a boycott of the Olympics would sacrifice the nation's interests and lead our athletes to consider joining China's teams was ridiculous.

Does Hsieh mean that if he is elected president and China belittles Taiwan during the Games, he will not ask our athletes to come home?

Given its Olympic history, the oft-quoted chestnut that sports and politics don't mix does not apply to Taiwan. Taiwan was absent from the 1976 and 1980 Games because of interference from China, while the nation's Olympic flag and anthem are stark testimony to the sad reality that politics does spill into the stadium.

Add this to the fact that the Beijing Olympics amount to one big political exercise designed to celebrate the Chinese Communist Party's international clout, and one can only conclude that the saying is bunkum.

By criticizing Ma, the DPP chairman is being hypocritical. The decision made by the government to reject the Olympic torch route was entirely a political one.

It is odd to suggest that an athlete's personal desire to win a gold medal should take precedence over national interests and dignity. After all, the first thing most athletes do after claiming a gold medal is grab their national flag and celebrate with a lap of honor or other show.

Given the increasing stranglehold Beijing is placing on Taiwan in the international arena and its track record of meddling in even the most trivial events in an effort to quash Taiwan's international space, it is inevitable that the Chinese government will try to demean Taiwan in some fashion during the Games. Its actions may be highly visible and noticeable to the international community or may take the form of subtler attacks on Taiwan's sovereignty that will be apparent only to the Chinese-speaking world.

And if Beijing does try something, then the nation's athletes -- regardless of how many years of sweat and hard work they have put into training -- should not need to be told what to do by politicians; they should be on the first plane home before those in power have even had a chance to speak out.
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