The Tharoor Candidacy: Woefully Optimistic?

India has formally backed Shashi Tharoor as its official candidate for the UN Secretary General’s post which falls vacant at the end of the year. With Kofi Annan completing his second term in New York, a slew of candidates are throwing their hats into the ring and lobbying hard amongst the member states of the UN, especially the P-5 nations which hold the crucial veto votes. Tharoor, the suave career diplomat and writer, has served in the UN for over two decades; currently he is part of the Annan team as the Under Secretary General for Communications and Public Information. His proximity to Annan will both boost and simultaneously hinder his chances at the top job. While there has been a broad agreement amongst member states that it the turn of Asia to get the Secretary General’s position this time that does not automatically make the election process for Tharoor any easier. Amongst the other contenders in the race are the Thai deputy PM Surakiart Sathirathai, South Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-Moon and Sri Lana’s former envoy to the UN and current close Annan aide Jayanta Dhampala. All these candidates have backings of one or more of the P-5 nations, and in the overall scenario, it is actually the P5 who will ultimately ‘elect’ a Secretary General.

The Tharoor candidacy while enjoying the backing of Indian government will not be an easy task. What with the so called Coffee Club comprising of nations like Pakistan and Italy firmly against the Indian candidature coupled with a demand by many nations to do away with Annan’s team completely and selecting a leader to take the UN in a new direction, Tharoor will have to drum up all the support he can from now till the October elections. Realizing that the Indian candidature may meet stiff resistance amongst the Security Council members like the US and China, India has decided to call for the process of electing a Secretary General to be shifted from the confines of the horse-shoe table to the UN General Assembly. In doing so, India hopes to drum up the support of the G 77 group of nations along with getting the NAM nations to back Tharoor. India will also get support from the African block of nations and the Indian calculation is that they stand a better chance in the general assembly than the Security Council. However, any expert on the UN will tell you that key decisions like finding a suitable Secretary General will not be handed out by the P5 to the general assembly, the Security Council would want to get a man most suited to its needs get the spot. In the prevailing situation it is unlikely that backing of the G77 and NAM will make the job of Tharoor any easier.

The US with its hawkish UN representative John Bolton has been asking for reforms in the UN in the post 9/11 world. They want the global body to become more proactive and take into consideration the post cold war and post 9/11 realities. They have argued that the sluggish pace of response by the UN on global issues often sees wars break out or massive human rights violations as is the case in Dafur in Sudan. They have also subtly tried to convey to the world body that in the post cold war era, the world must recognize the sole super power in the world will exercise unilateralism if it finds the UN to be dragging its feet. The unipolar reality came to the fore with the US war in Iraq which was in direct contradiction to the UN stand. The US-Annan relationship has also been bitter in the past few years. With the Oil for Food scam breaking out, many US diplomats were seen openly talking of a resolution to oust Annan. Bolton has indicated that the end of the Annan presidency should also usher the beginning of the new face of the UN lest it becomes a redundant body. In order to do so, they want to rid the new secretary general’s office of any Annan ‘remnants’. In such a situation, the chances of the US backing Tharoor are remote. India’s neighbors, Pakistan and China, will be wary of having an Indian at the top job; it is no surprise then that China has backed Sathirathai, while Pakistan’s UN envoy Munim Akram has talked about “fielding their own candidate”. As things exist at the moment there is a clear disconnect amongst the P5 on their ideal candidate for the job. The chances of Tharoor, with all his experience in the global body, are still remote at the outset and optimistic at best keeping in mind the prevailing global realities.