Editorial: Straight bat needed on Zimbabwe

The die now appears cast. The Black Caps' tour of Zimbabwe will proceed despite an opinion poll suggesting that more than three-quarters of New Zealanders want it stopped because of the Mugabe regime's appalling human rights record.

Any prospect of cancellation virtually evaporated during yesterday's stalemated talks between the Government and New Zealand Cricket. It is a situation which bestows little credit on the game's administrators and none whatsoever on the Government.

The responsibility for halting the tour was always bound to fall Government's way. Sports bodies would soon get in a muddle if they sought to base their international commitments on their own assessment of government standards. Many, such as New Zealand Cricket, can also point to contractual obligations. It, therefore, falls to governments to impose sporting sanctions when they believe they are warranted.

The Government, wary no doubt of election repercussions, has shown no stomach for that reality. Instead, it has produced, or sought comfort in, a number of red herrings. One of these involved New Zealand Cricket being saddled with a $US2 million-plus ($2.95 million) fine, part of which might find its way to Robert Mugabe, if the tour were cancelled.

In fact, the International Cricket Council's contract stipulates that a tour can be abandoned without penalty on the basis of any action taken by a government. In the case of India and Pakistan, that provision has already been triggered.

The Government also insisted that legislation cancelling the tour would be anti-democratic. That would hardly be the case if the human rights of New Zealanders were not compromised in the process. Legislation to stop the tour would dictate only that national sporting teams did not play in Zimbabwe. It would not stop individuals leaving New Zealand or travelling to that country.

Another Government ploy has been to pursue multi-party and international backing for sporting sanctions. It has trumpeted the uniting of parties from across the political spectrum in support of a submission to the ICC calling on that body to remove Zimbabwe from its future tours programme. Australia, the Government said, was supporting the initiative.

Pursuing international agreements can be a valid option to action by individual governments. But only where there is a chance of success. Any appeal to the ICC is sure to fall on stony ground, given that body is no longer governed by the view of Australia, New Zealand and England. In effect, this is a smokescreen to deflect attention from the Government's essential inactivity.

New Zealand Cricket, for its part, has been happy to toss up its own red herrings. Its insistence, for example, that cancellation of the tour would affect New Zealand's chance of co-hosting a World Cup in far-away 2011. Or that the Black Caps could remove themselves from the politics of the situation by having no contact with members of the Mugabe regime. Cricket's administrators have done themselves few favours by adhering rigidly to a path that pays no heed to the grim facts of Zimbabwe and the sentiment of New Zealanders.

The Government could still stop the tour by passing legislation under urgency. A third term in power seems a higher priority, however. Only security concerns will now derail the tour. Yet if this were to occur, it would indicate, sadly, that the situation in Zimbabwe had reached even more tragic proportions.