By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, June 21 -- After Ban Ki-moon won a one candidate election as UN Secretary General for the next five years, he came to take questions from the press. There are unanswered questions swirling about the inaction in Sudan of UN peacekeepers under Ban's command, and about Ban's own inaction on war crimes in Sri Lanka.
But with time limited, Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky whispered in the ear of the UN TV sound man, pointing out where to give the last question.
It was to UN Radio, the UN's own radio service, and the question was what Ban Ki-moon will do with the world's youth. Ban answered, then in the face of a request for a “question on Sudan,” Nesirky, Ban and two South Korean advisers left the UN, presumably to celebrate.
Afterward a number of reporters said it was improper to give one of the few questions to Ban to the UN's own in-house “propaganda” station, as one reporter called it, “under Ban's UN.”
Ban Ki-moon's big day began Tuesday with a meeting with Kim Sung-hwan the Foreign Minister of South Korea, the job Ban used to have. Then there was a billed media availability at 9:30 am about sustainable sanitation.
Inner City Press attended, ready to ask about Ban's Panel of Experts' finding that UN peacekeepers' practices in Mirebalais, Haiti hadn't stopped feces from entering drinking water. But no questions were taken.
At noon Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesman Nesirky, who said there had been no meeting, only the 9:30 event, four seats and a rostrum. Inner City Press asked about the Sri Lanka Killing Fields documentary -- Nesirky said Ban hasn't seen it, but that it's incorrect -- and then about GRULAC, the Latin American and Caribbean states group.
A GRULAC member has shown Inner City Press notes from Ban's meeting with GRULAC, as which the “invisibility” of Latin America and the Caribbean in Ban's first term was critiqued. Inner City Press asked Nesirky what is Ban's response to the critique.
“The immediate response is he's just come back from a long trip to four countries in Latin America,” Nesirky said.
Inner City Press asked, so the trip was his response to the critique?
“That's extremely frivolous,” said Nesirky, later in the day to give the UN's own in-house radio station the last question, rather than take a chance on Ban having to response to actual critiques.
“Trips take a long time to plan," Nesirky added.
But of course the problem is more than trips. Ban may be going to the South Sudan independence ceremony on July 9, but has yet to address the inaction of UN peacekeepers under his command in Abyei and Southern Kordofan, much less questions about Darfur.
In between the questionless press (non) availability at 9:30 and this noon briefing, Ban met with his corporate Global Compact. An attendee said he left early, saying there's “something in the General Assembly... about my future,” to much laughter.
Then as the speeches began, with Bolivia having to give the speech for GRULAC, one of Ban's spokespeople pointedly asked Inner City Press, “Happy day, isn't it?” Reporters are not supposed to say (but only show). Watch this site.
