Justice and truth has prevailed, declared Novak Djokovic’s brother Djordje. Although not too much truth, it transpired. There turned out to be significant limitations on the truth being told at a triumphant press conference in Belgrade.
The truth around Djokovic’s public appearances, sans mask, the day after testing positive for Covid on December 16, for instance. We never got to the bottom of that.
The preferred form of discourse from the top table was lengthy monologue, and the only questions permitted concerned the wonderfulness of Serbia’s favourite son and his chances of crushing his totalitarian tormentors on the tennis court, having won in the court of law.
When questions turned to Djokovic’s movement and activity between December 16 and 17, however, it turned out truth was a rather overrated commodity.
One minute Djordje was revealing the family credo as ‘be truthful all the way’, the next it was time to adjourn when members of the free press — and Novak was standing, according to his father, for ‘freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of speech’ — began to question why a person with a positive Covid test would continue public engagements, unmasked.
A question about what Djokovic might regret raised the first hackle. Djordje wanted to know where this journalist might be from, to have departed so dramatically from the gloating party line. The same voice sought clarification over whether Djokovic had tested positive on December 16.
Novak Djokovic's family held a bizarre press conference on Monday live from Belgrade, Serbia
According to the Djokovic family, truth and justice has prevailed in his fight with Australia
Djordje was now seeing one coming. He confirmed the date but wanted to know if there was a second part to the question. Yes, it transpired. Was Novak at an event on December 17? Well, family Djokovic had certainly delivered enough truth bombs for one day. Now it was time to call the meeting to an end, link arms and sing the Serbian national anthem.
Turned out there was no time to discover the truth of whether Djokovic went knowingly out and about, with Covid, meeting and greeting and eschewing a protective face mask.
For, however badly Australian government officials and its border control have fared in this saga, Djokovic is no hero. If he does not wish to be vaccinated, that is his choice. If he does not wish to be vaccinated and contracts Covid, that’s still in the realms of the personal.
But if he does not wish to be vaccinated, contracts Covid, then leaves home knowingly with a highly contagious disease that has already killed 5.49million people worldwide, and does not have the basic humanity to wear the small piece of cloth on his face that might protect others, a line has been crossed. He stops being a freedom fighter and becomes a menace.
Djokovic was pictured with young tennis players the day after he tested positive. And no, children, even teenagers, aren’t greatly at risk from Covid. But they do often live in inter- generational households, or attend inter-generational gatherings, particularly close to Christmas.
So when Dijana, his mother, emoted greatly over the living conditions in her son’s halfway house hotel, equating his treatment to torture and harassment, finishing with a plaintive, ‘Every mother in the world will understand me’, she shouldn’t take such empathy for granted. Not every mother’s son chose to hang
