UN Secretary General Candidacy

Boutros Boutros Ghali from Egypt –the first secretary general (SG) of the United Nations whose name I was aware of, that too for a general knowledge test conducted all over the middle east by the UN. I was in grade 7 or 8; I am not sure. And since this important guy of the world’s uniting confederation was from Egypt – an Arabic speaking country, there was some amount of pride instilled in me.

Then came Kofi Annan from Ghana. He must have been an awfully capable person or why else would the world elect a guy from Ghana? Where? Some African nation we might possibly hear about once in 4 years ‘if’ their team makes it to the football world cup. Capable he probably was – this is what I thought years back when I learnt of the latest SG for the UN. Of course, I wasn’t aware of the criteria involving SG selections.

The first time I was learning about UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO, The Intl Court of Justice and all those, I felt so good thinking someone somewhere was doing good deeds in this world. I was proud to live in this era where all nations were united and there would be no more world wars for a peace-loving UN was present, vigilant, unlike the utter failure ‘the League of Nations’.

Coming here to Dubai in 2003, I got more aware of world politics and current affairs (what with being forced to watch almost only news channels through the day). Only in these recent years was I perceptive of how useless the UN actually is, especially its Security Council.

The war on terror (read ‘the war on Afghanistan’ by the US), the UN arms inspector Hans Blix’s report of the situation of WMD’s in Iraq and finally the offensive on Iraq, to my utter dismay, all this while the UN took a by-passer’s stance. Talk about being disillusioned. I probably should have known that, after all, the long-running Palestine-Israel conflict was the perfect example of their inadequacy.

I was rudely surprised to hear Kofi Annan and his son’s names in the ‘oil for food scheme scam’. How could a person appointed for humanitarian work take bribes (if the allegations were true)?? How badly has corruption affected our world?

Israel’s recent attacks on Lebanon and how long does it take for the UN to respond? Israel says it needs 2 more weeks of butchery and bloodbath before it calls in for a cease-fire and does the UN object?? Probably that’s when I got this sense of déjà vu, like its all happened before, under a different name – the futile League of Nations.

Somewhere along enters the issue of electing a Kofi Annan, ooops sorry, a new SG. Enter Shashi Tharoor, India’s nominee, hailing from the district of Palakkad in state of Kerala. As an Indian, I rejoiced learning his odds were good, but I knew I had to be my skeptical self until the very end.

Yesterday was the fourth and last round of informal voting for the new SG. The results were a real let down. South Korea’s foreign minister Ban-Ki-Moon came ahead of Tharoor in all 4 rounds. The South Korean bagged the support of all of the Security Council members who voted, while Tharoor was voted against by some of them (which can be likened to a veto). Tharoor withdrew from the election; according to the Malayalam radio news, he said ‘withdrawal’ didn’t sounded as bad as ‘failure’.

Now I know why Egypt, why Ghana, why South Korea…why entities from such powerless or insignificant countries. They can be trained as the puppets (a usage from Riverbend’s blog) of the world’s supreme power(s) - on second thoughts, world’s supreme power (read USA) and its tails (Britain & France). On the other hand, if an all important post like the SG got into the hands of a growing country like India, which by the way is still a non-aligned country, what would the puppet masters do when the puppet thought on its own and decided to act on its own?!!? Get it?