Preparing Kofi Annan’s succession at the UN
Alright, I can’t find the article that said that France didn’t want to hear about Ban Ki Moon – have I dreamt it? – so inbetween I’ll post the one about Ban leading the pack…
Preparing Kofi Annan’s succession at the UN
Candidates from India and South Korea have better chances to succeed the Ghanean.
The succession of the Secretary Genral of the UN, Kofi Annan, is now open. His second five-year mandate will end on December 31. Despite the wishes of John Bolton, the iconoclast US ambassador, to forego the unwritten rule to rotate geographically, the consensus of designing this time around an Asian remains.
There are four declared candidates: UN’s under-secretary for communication, Shashi Tharoor, from India; the South Korean State Secretary, Ban Ki-Moon; Jayantha Dhanapala, a sri-lankan diplomat and UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs1; and finally Thailand’s Vice-Premier, Surakiart Sathirathai. Although the latter has been campaigning for about a year, he is still called in New York “the Thai”, which tells volumes on his chances and on how difficult to memorize his name is.
The election shold be held end of September or early October. How does one campaign for this job? A candidate started touring capital cities, so the other candidates had to do the same, says Shashi Tharoor in jest. He was officially presented as a candidate by India in June. UN regional groups have held special meetings to hear the candidates. This adds an element of transparency to proceedings held behind closed doors, comments Tharoor, in perfect French; Paris insists that the Secretary General, whoerver he may be, must be able to work in French).
The UN Charter says that the Secretary General is elected by the 192 member states, upon recommendation from the Security Council, which five permanent members have a veto right. Some countries have complained that the selection process by the Security Council is rather opaque, but this year, efforts toward transparency were made, says Edward Luck, professor at Columbia U. and former consultant for the reform if the UN.
Straw poll every month
This was started under the initiative of Jean-Marc de la Sablière, France’s ambassador: building on the bad memories left by the election of Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1991, France offered to help channel the selection process. Every month a straw poll is organized, with three options: encourage the candidate to proceed, advise he drops out, or no opinion. The result of this secret ballot only has advisory value.
The first poll was organized on July 24, each Security Council member receiving, to preserve secrecy, an identical pen. Ambassador Bolton is said to have handed it back at the end of the vote, doing my bit for the UN budget [dda: jackass]. The results of the vote, supposedly secret, were rapidly known. This doesn’t surprise me in the least, Bolton said mirthfully.
South Korea’s Ban Ki Moon led the poll: 12 of the 15 members of the Security Council encouraged him to proceed with his campaign. Next came UN’s Shashi Tharoor, with ten votes. Surakiart and Dhanapala only received seven and five votes for, respectively. However, it is hard to make any guess from this vote, and permanent members have a veto right.
Last minute candidate?
Two votes encouraged Shashi Tharoor to drop out of the race. Was one of them from the US, which find the Indian too close to Kofi Annan to their taste? John Bolton refused to say whether he had a favorite. At this point, it would be tantamount to a death kiss. Like the French Ambassador, Bolton mentioned the possibility that new candidates could still come forward. This procedure looked more like a call for candidature than anything else, joked a diplomat. But so far, no other candidate has shown up.
This doesn’t exclude a last-minute surprise, explains Edward Luck. In 1991, Boutros-Ghali was one of the last candidates to go public, he recalls. Among the potentials are: Goh Chok Tong, Singapore’s former Premier, who could receive the support of other South-East Asian countries, would Surakiart Sathirathai step down.
There have been rumors also of Turkey’s Kemal Dervis, Administrator of the United Nation Development Programme – UNDP; Prince Zeid al-Hussein, ambassador of Jordan to the UN; and even an Estearn Europe candidate, like former Poland President Aleksander Kwaśniewski Latvia’s President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga.
1: That’s inaccurate: United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced today the appointment of Nobuaki Tanaka of Japan as the new Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, succeeding Nobuyasu Abe, effective 6 April 2006. He used to be Under-Secretary-General in re-establishing the Department of Disarmament he held this post from 1998-2003. Make that former Under-Secretary…