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The Olympic Games in Rio De Janeiro was a great success and it ran from 5th August to 21st August 2016. Then the retired partners of KPMG audit who are still awaiting their gratuity and pension landed in town to carry out what for want of a better expression was a “Samba Audit”. The accounts were a mess. After the running, leaping, hop-stepping and high/long jumping, rowing, gymnastics, vaulting, volleyballing, boxing, golfing, taekwondoing, shooting, swimming and of course footballing plus the magnificent synchronised diving, Brazil was broke (financially) and also broken (socially). It was all so reminiscent of a huge hangover after an all-night party. But who is going to pay the bills?
From Copa Cabana beach all the way to Brasilia, Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Manaus and Foreteleza, the protest had been gathering momentum well before the opening ceremony. The wretched and the poor were united and were up in arms against what they considered to be wrong priority by their insensitive government and corrupt President, Dilman Rousseff. With only a few weeks before the opening ceremony of the Olympics, the President was sent on suspension and replaced with an acting President, Michel Temer, who had hitherto been the Vice-President. Even the Mayor of Rio De Janerio, Eduardo Paes, joined in protesting that there was no money to pay the contractors, gangsters, spivs, hustlers and those he described as the “Olympic Mafia” who had cornered everything for themselves and their cronies.
Of course we were dazzled by the stunning performance of Hussain Bolt, Mo Farrah, Simone Biles, Wayde van Niekerk, Michael Phelps, Katie Ledesck, Ryan Lochte, Jimmy Feigen, Jack Conger, Gunner Bentz, Mack Horton, Kyle Chalmers, Thiago Da Silvav, and Joseph Schooling.
However, this was not enough to dissuade Lucy Marcus of IE Business School from delivering judgment: “Thanks to the International Olympics Congress [IOC], the Olympics now embodies some of the most prominent problems the world is facing today, from inequality to exploitation; to sheer hypocrisy among our leaders. The IOC disregards the athletes’ interests, to the point it permitted the Russian team to compete in Rio de Janeiro, despite recent revelations about Russia’s official doping programme and the World Anti-Doping Agency’s recommendation that the team be banned. Likewise, it is indifferent to how host cities and countries fare, particularly the vast debts that pile up while hosting the Games.”
Even Tokyo which is billed to host the next Olympic Games in 2020 is already jittery. On CNN, the new Governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike could not conceal her apprehension that “The Games may hobble future generations with debt and white elephant structures which would serve a single purpose in 2020, only to mar the skyline for years and decades after.”
Andres Zimbalist, Professor of Economics at Smith College, 10 Elm Street, Northampton, Massachusetts, United States of America, was as pungent as he was damning: “The International Olympic Committee is an unregulated global monopoly with arbitrary self-interested decision-making practically programmed into its organizational DNA.”
Under the aegis of “Project Syndicate”, the collective of think-tankers have concluded that “There was a time when the Olympic Movement was viewed as an almost perfect commons and a global common good. But the International Olympic Committee’s stunning fall from grace is hardly unique: governments of all types – international, supranational, national, and local – are held in low esteem almost everywhere nowadays. It is a trend that both reflects and re-inforces the rise of populist politics in much of the developed world and it is unlikely that governments will recover lost legitimacy anytime soon.”
As for Argentinian billionaire Eduardo Constantini, he was far less perturbed by the doping and cheating at the Olympics (especially by Russia). He studied economics at the University of East Anglia in England. His concern is firmly with the Argentinian economy. He took Richard Quest into confidence on CNN: “Too many Argentines just don’t understand the importance of fixing inflation. There are economic rules. It’s a science and people don’t respect that. Argentines think that they can cheat at everything. That’s why we are a different country.”
As for Nigeria and the Olympic Games, the post-mortem has commenced in earnest, according to the Daily Sun newspaper of August 24, 2016. Front page headline: “RIO 2016 Fallout: Kaoje, Oyedeji Slam Sports Ministry, NOC”.
Even more damning was the front page headline of Nigerian Tribune newspaper of August 24, 2016: “ATHLETICS IS DEAD IN NIGERIA – Franca Idoko; Says Okagbare Is Under Pressure”.
As if to remind Nigeria that it has far more pressing issues to contend with than Olympic medals, the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, despatched his Secretary of State, John Kerry to Nigeria to lecture the government on how to defeat the dreaded Boko Haram insurgents. The front page report in Daily Sun newspaper of August 24, 2016 has gone viral. Headline: “HOW TO DEFEAT BOKO HARAM – Kerry”.
As for bankers, they gave the Olympics a wide berth. Instead, they headed for Jackson Hole, Wyoming, United States of America. The topic of the Jackson Hole meeting was “Designing Resilient Monetary Policy Frameworks for the Future”.
As if to beam the searchlight at the agony and anguish of the rest of the world while Rio de Janeiro was revelling in fun and games, Globo TV carried as BREAKING NEWS: Headline: “MAN HANGS SELF OVER ECONOMIC HARDSHIP”.
This was followed by the front page report of Vanguard newspaper of September 6, 2016. Headline: “WOMAN ATTACKS HUSBAND WITH CUTLASS OVER MOVE TO MARRY ANOTHER WIFE.
Perhaps the most galling was the front page of Sunday Sun newspaper of September 4, 2016. Headline: “MY SAHARA DESERT ORDEAL BY NIGERIAN MIGRANT WHO DRANK URINE TO STAY ALIVE”.
J.K. Randle
