By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/cote3choi031710.html
UNITED NATIONS, March 17 -- After Cote d'Ivoire Laurent Gbagbo delayed elections for the fifth time, his Ambassador to the UN Alcide Djedje complained to the UN Security Council on Wednesday that "the UN cannot validate a poll... with a private television in the area controlled by the rebels, which campaigns for one of 14 candidates."
Inner City Press asked Djedje at the stakeout that followed what he and the Gbagbo administration would like the UN to do about this television station. "It should be suprime," he answered: suppressed.
When the UN's envoy to Cote d'Ivoire Choi Young-jin came to the stakeout, Inner City Press asked him what the UN thinks of the Gbagbo administration's call to "suppress" a TV station.
I can only tell you the facts, Mr. Choi replied. There is a government station, and in Boike the rebel capital, there is "TV Ma Patrie."
But is the UN concerned by a government in a country with a large UN peacekeeping mission openly calling for the suppression of a TV station? We have to wait for the Ivoirians to deal with it, Choi in essence said.
So what about the UN's commitment to free press, or at least against government censorship or suppression? Inner City Press asked Ambassador Djedje what his government thinks of Choi. He is doing a good job, Djedje replied not surprisingly.
Choi previously said that the voters list was fine. Now that Gbagbo wants 429,000 voters stricken from the rolls, Choi appears to have changed his position.
Choi himself may be changing position. Within the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, people have noted questions in Abidjan about Choi leaving the UN Mission in Ivory Coast. Inner City Press asked Choi. He replied that when he took the job two and a half years ago, it was to see the election held. "You'll be there a long time," more than one reporter retorted.
Senior UN officials approached Inner City Press later on Wednesday to talk about Choi moving to the UN mission on or about Somalia. Sure, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, after calling for a moratorium on reporting on the killing of civilians by peacekeepers should many at the UN feel be replaced. But to pull Choi out of Cote d'Ivoire without holding the promised election? What this site.
Footnotes: Ambassador Djedje, after his stakeout, declined to give a business reporter his card. A business wire story included the day's price of cocoa, quoting a trader that its rise had more to do with weather than the atmosphere under Gbagbo. U.S. and European media views Cote d'Ivoire through a cocoa chocolate lens.
Meanwhile a diplomat of a rising Asian power snarked to Inner City Press, why is France pushing so hard on elections, when elections can bring problems? French Ambassador Araud declined to speak at the stakeout, or in the hall, making a quip that seemed on the record but which we'll leave aside for now. The Asian diplomat wondered, of Myanmar as well, why the European powers are so openly obsessed about their former colonies. Why indeed.
