Rule of law, Rule of sponsors
Yesterday, I covered the FIFA courts in South Africa: a commercial/politically-motivated streaming of Cup crime above all others, drawing particularly unfair punishments, all processed in record time. Constitutionally, that’s really quite troubling.
But commercial sport’s casts more shadows on the law than that. Let’s not forget the orange ladies that dared to wear minidresses. Part of a commercial conspiracy by Bavaria Beer to get ‘free’ advertising on the back of the World Cup, they faced charges of "unauthorised commercial activities inside an exclusion zone" and "enter[ing] into a designated area while in unauthorised possession of a commercial object".
Under diplomatic pressure from the Dutch government, the charges were dropped. Yet somewhat incredibly, the UK government has also seen fit to make commercial use of certain words (like “Gold” or “2012”) a criminal offence once the Games roll into town – I shit you not).
Here’s a quick lesson in how commercial interests get to set criminal law in this country:
Corporations, if they really suffered damages, could potentially sue. But then, the poor sponsors are faced with the hassle of going after minidress wearers, in tort law, or the people the sponsors bought their ad exclusivity from (in London 2012’s case, the IOC and LOCOG), in contract law.
So the sponsors have a good ol’ moan (in SA, to FIFA; for the Games, to Seb Coe); these then bring their weight to bear on our governments, who then crack the whip over their legislature in order to pass draconian criminal laws.
How nice: I’ll have to remember that next time I go into commerce, I should just get the state to make some special criminal laws making it a special criminal offence for people to tread on my special business toes. Much better than having to get my own lawyers involved to sort out my own commercial problems – I can just send the cops in. And who knows; maybe we should even do what the South Africans do: fast-track it through a special system of steroid-addled courts, at huge financial outlay.
Even the Chinese government didn’t think it appropriate to go down this route for Beijing 2008. But clearly, the West is unwavering in its commitment to democracy and the rule of law and gets to repeatedly poke the Chinks in the eye with how bloomin awesome our constitutions are. Especially during their Olympics.
One can only hope they think to return the favour.
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