A tennis player who trains and a government that procrastinates in front of the eyes of the whole world. The Djokovic saga in Melbourne has been in full swing for ten days without it being known whether the world number one will finally be able to play in the Australian Open, which begins on Monday.
Australian Conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison came under fire on Friday for delaying a decision on whether or not to expel the unvaccinated champion. Turned back on his arrival in Melbourne on January 5 and placed in a detention center, “Nole” was released at the start of the week, his lawyers having succeeded in having his revoked visa reinstated.
Immigration Minister Alex Hawke has threatened to deport the champion anyway under his discretionary power. His services later said the decision was delayed by an avalanche of motions filed by Djokovic’s legal team.
Finance Minister Simon Birmingham insisted on Friday that Australia would only allow people on full Covid vaccination schedules or those with an acceptable medical exemption to enter its territory. “This policy has not changed and we will continue to strictly enforce this policy,” he said on the ABC television channel.
This saga around the tennis champion has a very strong political charge in Australia, whose inhabitants have endured for almost two years some of the strictest anti-Covid restrictions in the world, and where elections are scheduled for May. The immigration minister “must decide now whether Djokovic leaves or not,” Labor Senator Kristina Keneally tweeted, noting that the Serb got his visa 58 days earlier. “The Morrison government is simply incompetent. It’s a joke”.
Tsitsipas dismantles “Nole”
For his part, the 34-year-old Serb continued training in Melbourne on Friday in the hope of winning a 10th title at the Australian Open, which starts on Monday, and a 21st Grand Slam victory, which would be a record. Thursday’s Australian Open draw named Serbian Miomir Kecmanovic, ranked 78th in the world, as Djokovic’s first-round opponent.
Djokovic has admitted incorrectly filling out his entry declaration to Australia, and failing to follow isolation rules after testing positive for Covid-19 in December. Some tennis players have pleaded for Djokovic to be able to participate in the Open, but others are much more critical.
Novak Djokovic «played by his own ruless” choosing not to get vaccinated ahead of the Australian Open and “makes the majority of players look like idiots”, estimated Thursday the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas, world number four, in an interview with the Indian media WION. “It takes a lot of nerve to do it and it puts the whole tournament at risk… I don’t think many players would do that”, he added.
As the omicron variant spreads in Australia, Djokovic’s behavior after he tested positive for coronavirus in Serbia on December 16 is under scrutiny. The player notably participated in public events, without a mask, on December 16 and 17 in Belgrade, but claimed that he did not yet know he was positive at that time.
In a long message published on Instagram on Wednesday, he however recognized a “misjudgment” for having received, knowing that he was asymptomatic, the French daily newspaper L’Equipe for an interview on December 18. Djokovic also pleaded “human error” to explain how a wrong box on his Australian entry form was ticked. This document shows that he attested not to have traveled in the 14 days preceding his arrival. However, he was in Serbia and then in Spain.
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