Archives
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Post-Election
Thoughts
Our new Secretary-General Elect
Our new Secretary-General Elect
PSAYINGS.5A.40. It's (almost) official now:
NEW YORK -- The U.N. Security Council
unanimously selected South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-moon to be the
organization's eighth secretary-general yesterday, acting just hours
after North Korea declared it had tested a nuclear weapon.
The 192 member-nations of the U.N. General Assembly are expected to affirm the choice later this week or early next week, giving the low-key South Korean foreign minister more than two months to prepare before beginning his five-year term.
The 192 member-nations of the U.N. General Assembly are expected to affirm the choice later this week or early next week, giving the low-key South Korean foreign minister more than two months to prepare before beginning his five-year term.
I know we all got a little numb during the final blitz of campaign ads, whistle-stop tours, and the nightly hype of the MSM about the dread possibility of a "September Surprise," but in the end the system worked, as it usually does in a democratic enterprise. Perhaps the process is overlong (I mean, who can even remember all the way back to those endless primary debates in February and March?); yet there's no getting around the fact that voters wouldn't have had the ability to choose meaningfully among the competing U.N. reform agendas put forward by the candidates if we hadn't seen them under fire from one another and in the blizzard of (arguably too) negative TV ads that saturated worldwide television in August and September. Back in midsummer -- be honest here, please -- could you really have explained the differences between Ban Ki-moon's 5-point "Reform Roadmp," Ahmud Ti Ranh's 10-point "Reformist Jihad," Bill Clinton's 28-point "New Deal for the U.N.," George Galloway's 4-point "Fatwah against Israeli Control of the U.N.," and Kofi Annan, Jr.'s 7-point "Five-Year Plan for Creating a Path to the Selection of a Committee to Carefully Consider the Framework of a Reform Process"? I know I couldn't.
And as unpopular as it may be this morning, I'll even speak up in defense of the extremely negative tone of much of the campaign, from the media echo chamber of scurrilous allegations about Ban Ki-moon's supposed ties to the Reverend Sung Moon's religious cult to the unbelievably personal TV attacks on Kofi Jr. based on nothing more than his blood relationship to the outgoing Secretary General. Like everyone else, I winced at the ugly thread of anti-Arabism that finally sank Ahmud Ti Ranh's hopes, but in the final analysis voters do have to feel confident that whoever is running the U.N. is putting the welfare of the entire world above narrow allegiances to individual regions, religions, and non-state entities. If Ahmud's integrity is as spotless as he kept claiming it was, then he should be able to use the name recognition he received this time around to mount a more successful campaign in 2010.
Finally, I will admit that I too am relieved that the whole circus is over at last. The ubiquitous clamor of a campaign like this one is always fatiguing. In its wake, one can't help feeling drained and exhausted. Still, with so very much at stake for everyone, the exhaustion is the good kind, imbued with the knowledge that all the energy consumed was the worthwhile sort that ends in real accomplishment.
Congratulations, Secretary General Ki-moon. We pledge our support for the promises you made and look forward to the "100 Days of Reform" that will kick off your period of "honeymoon" with the Security Council and the General Assembly. With the popular mandate you've received, you should be able to make some serious progress at last, not only on U.N. reform, but also on the other issues you pushed so tirelessly during the campaign: ending the genocide in Darfur, de-nuclearizing Korea and Iran, restraining the violence and chaos of international jihadism, and ensuring that Hamas and Hizbollah either recognize Israel or disband. Remember, they know we'll be watching attentively..
Good luck on all that. To you. And to us.
