Ceylon Today Editorial

Will Integrity at UN stand up?

12 October 2016

Just after the UN announced that ex-Portugal Prime Minister Antonio Guterres had been appointed as the new UN Secretary General, what, asked one man from another, is the best way to reform the United Nations?

The man's glib quip was "Shut it down".

International media respected for their journalistic integrity, including the respected Deutsche Welle, quotes Johannes Beck the political scientist as saying that "the new Secretary-General must urgently reform the United Nations. However, Antonio Guterres' time as Portuguese Prime Minister gives reason to doubt that he is the right man for the job". As Premier, he first spoke stridently against giving jobs to 'party men' but ended up dishing out thousands of jobs to his party's men, and not just the youth.

So here's a man who has not a very exciting track record on political integrity. But we will not pre-judge.

Beck's opinion deserves in-depth consideration in the context of an organization that exercises such far reaching global socio-political clout as does the UN. We in Sri Lanka have seen how the outgoing UNSG Ban Ki-moon softened up just that little bit on war crimes issues only after the current government took power in Colombo. As everyone knows, never did he take the side of the Lankan Governments or the Lankan people who suffered under LTTE terrorism.
Is that integrity, we might well ask.

All that ended with us losing export access to several capitals, especially the GSP-Plus of the EU whose President was none other than another former Portuguese Premier, Mr. José Manuel Barroso, under whom the EU's foundational Constitution insisted on refugee intakes by member nations. That led to the UK's exit from the EU. The problem globally has been that even terrorists have been extended sympathy when their followers wear the "refugees from Genocide" mask which is not to be confused, but is, with refugees from the wars in the Sudan and Syria, which is used by terrorists to blur the lines of definition. Sri Lanka still struggles with the effects of that blurred definition.

What's relevant in Gutteres' appointment as UNSG is that he has in his capacity as head of the UN Refugee apparatus until recently, been pro-refugee and that has not gone down too well especially in the UK where the BREXIT vote was a sound denunciation of refugee intake imposed on EU Member States by the EU, irrespective of whether they were genuine, fleeing genocide or were terrorists and terror supporters fleeing just arrest and punishment for unleashing death and destruction in countries such as Sri Lanka.

The reason why an UNSG's credentials need to be above scrutiny and seeped in integrity is because nations such as Sri Lanka need men of sheer integrity in key UN positions if the nation's conduct in ending the 30-year terrorism splurge is to be seen in its correct perspective, namely, a war by terrorists, a war that is even at this very moment under the UN's unrelenting probe to lynch leaders here for alleged war crimes when it should be the other way around.

Can Sri Lanka depend on integrity and an objective look at what's on the table at the UNHRC sessions come March 2017... or will he be merely, like Ban Ki-moon before him ... be just an extension of the 'big four' who, through funding the UN, control its destinies....and Sri Lanka's?

We are up against a powerful presence of men and women lacking integrity at the helm of powerful bodies such as the EU, UN, UK and USA. This issue cannot be confused with other issues where paradoxically these organizations and governments are proving to be of immense importance in helping Sri Lanka get on her feet economically as well as socio-politically.
But this confusing, this paradoxical, duality must end.

Until recently, Jose Manuel Barroso, whose controversial decision to join the investment bank Goldman Sachs as its President came under a strong demand by European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, who objected to Barroso's decision to work for Goldman because of the US investment bank's role in mortgages which unleashed the global financial crisis.

It's fearful to know that such powerful bodies, even such as the EU, have been led by men lacking integrity.

Sri Lanka's chances of getting a fair hearing against terrorism when the UNHRC meets this coming March to review the US engineered resolution that hangs like the Sword of Damocles over Sri Lanka.