Mikk Salu: what breeds culture of deceit?

Photo: Toomas Huik

In a recent conversation with a public relations personality, the latter drew comparisons between sports and politics: in both, all options are OK to make it big. Both, therefore, abound with temptations to deceive. Truly there are parallels to sports and politics. Both are based on competition. Winners and losers. Some get to parliament, some do not. Some are carried in arms, hailed in Town Hall Squares... others are ridiculed: why send such losers to Olympics!?

In competitive fields, one more characteristic is common: the winner takes it all, or almost all. Tennis players come in the millions, but only the top hundred begin to break it even financially, and only in top ten one becomes a multimillionaire.

Sports, or pop music, serving as examples of extreme wage gaps. In most other fields, people who work as dentists, shop assistants or teachers, the differences in income are smaller. Politics are to be ranked in the extreme category, for even if financially speaking a prime minister and a parliament backbencher may not differ that greatly, their power varies hugely.

It is also true that from the beginning of time top sports have come with cheats, doping being the usual thing. In the context of drawing parallels with politics, the epochs and sports most interesting are such as when doping has become massive. Times like that have occurred in athletics and weight lifting, but also in endurance sports like bicycling, skiing and long distance running. In bicycling, for instance, it is estimated that in the second half of 1990ies and beginning of 2000s, over 90 per cent of professionals used doping.

How can such a situation occur? The bicyclists or any other doping-fans cannot be all that different, morally, from the rest of us, can they? And indeed it becomes evident that the «winner takes it all» thing is not enough to birth an unconquerable urge to cheat. It takes two prerequisites. In bicycling, for instance, it so happened that, in 1989, a doping substance called EPO entered the market; the first test to detect its use only arriving in 2001. Thus, the sportsmen had more than a decade to use the doping, unhindered, with no fears of getting caught. Secondly: EPO did not make you 0.1 or 0.5 per cent better – rather, it was 5 to 10 per cent, thereby offering a competitive edge so vast as to rob the would-be-honest of all opportunities. Therefore: zero chance of getting caught plus huge competitive edge equals culture of deceit.

Now, back to politics. Have we come to a situation where liars or corrupt guys enjoy a 100 per cent guarantee of not getting caught? Do cheating and fraud offer such vast advantages that one just cannot do without them? Right now, it does seem that both questions may (thankfully) still be answered «no». A useful hint: successful fight against deceit and false play, including in politics, first and foremost involves keeping it that way.