By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, June 11 -- With the UN Secretary General for the next five years about to be anointed with only one candidate and no competition, the ironies abound. Even the Global Model United Nations had ten candidates to lead its upcoming meeting in Incheon, South Korea.
At a June 10 briefing, Inner City Press asked the winner, Tatiana Makarova of the Russian Federation, about the competition. As written up by the UN itself, “Asked how she had been selected to be Secretary-General and if there had been more than one candidate, Ms. Makarova said that 10 people had been nominated from around the world in a long and difficult process. Debates and interviews had followed.”
For Ban Ki-moon, by contrast, there have been no debates at all. He made his pitch in closed door meetings with regional groups, and now awaits a Security Council rubber stamp vote on June 16, when he won't even be in the country but rather visiting Security Council member Brazil.
A Caribbean nation's Permanent Representative told Inner City Press later on June 10, “once the Big Five signed off on Ban, it was a done deal, the rest of us are just window dressing.” He referred to the second stamp, even more rubber, set for the General Assembly on June 21.
But even without competition, sources in Ban's office tell Inner City Press that recently the re-appointment has been the focus of that offices work, putting pressure on member states to get instructions from their capitals within 24 hours and issue statements.
Ironically, in the contested UN Staff Union election held from June 7-9, the incumbents who have been critical of Ban are charged with using their UN offices on 48th Street for campaigning - meanwhile, Ban's Office just to the south has long been devoted to politicking. What could happen, before June 16 and 21? Watch this site.
