By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, January 27 -- Some troubles have hit Ban Ki-moon after four years and a month as UN Secretary General.
As he seeks a second term he has been accused of being weak on human rights, while the UN and its Human Rights Council have been pilloried in the US House of Representatives.
Ban has been portrayed as a bad manager and even corrupt by former UN investigator Inga Britt Ahlenius, in response to which Ban claimed that 99% of his officials publicly disclose their finances.
This is patently false: even Ban's close ally and architect of his becoming S-G, Choi Young-jin, refused to make public his finances. Ban has gone to Davos. In New York, Inner City Press has for days after for an explanation or retraction of Ban's 99% claim, but has gotten no response.
To counter the growing storm in the Republic led House Foreign Affair Committee, Ban has reportedly tapped former Democratic aide Robert Orr. But how will he face off or even meet with Committee chairperson Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)?
She issued a press release about the investigation of the UN's acting top investigator Michael Dudley. When Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky for the status of the case against Dudley, the belated response was only that “On Michael Dudley's case, the case is ongoing before the Dispute Tribunal and we would have no comment as it proceeds.”
In Washington the word on Orr is that he designed for Kofi Annan the Human Rights Council “solution.” Since both Republicans and Democrats on today's Foreign Affairs Committee are critical of Orr's brainchild, it seems ill advised for Ban to make Orr the point man. But this is Ban.
The picture that emerges is of an Executive Office of the Secretary General in which Kim Won-soo and to some degree Vijay Nambiar advise Ban. Others have been marginalized into being mere notetakers, synthesizer of the cables that come in to the UN from the field.
The small team around Ban, when faced for example with the criticism leveled by Human Rights Watch about Ban's weakness on rights in such places as Sri Lanka, China and Myanmar, is not to listen to or think about the critique, but to personalize things. So it is all blamed on HRW director Ken Roth, with much complaining that Roth was given access, but that this will not continue. Faced with tough questions, it seems, Team Ban retaliates.
Sample advice that Ban receives is for example to not get involved in Tunisia, and to say even less about protests in Egypt than the Obama administration does. This of course conflicts with Ban's exhortations in the name of democracy in Cote d'Ivoire, to which he sent his ally Choi Young-jin as envoy.
Team Ban seems to think that their stand on Cote d'Ivoire is a high point of their four years, a platform for a second term. Meanwhile more and more African country peel away from the position -- South Africa, Ghana, Uganda. Will Ban put this genie back in the bottle at the upcoming African Union summit? Watch this site.
