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How Surakiart bungles his own UN campaign

Published on Dec 22, 2005


Deputy Prime Minister Surakiart Sathirathai has never ceased to amaze me with his clumsy, eager-beaver diplomacy. His quest for the position of United Nations secretary-general (UNSG) amply demonstrates his bungling working style.



Surakiart succeeded in receiving Asean’s support for his quest about one and a half years before Kofi Annan’s term ends by running a pushy campaign, particularly in regards to how he went about gaining support from Singapore, the last Asean member to give in. Then he sent his permanent secretary to ask a Taiwanese diplomat to lobby his case with the 25 or so UN members that still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan – even though Surakiart has previously said publicly that Thai-Taiwan relations are strictly economic. However, the most disgraceful tactic was reserved for his treatment of Supachai Panitchpakdi, when Thailand’s permanent representative to the UN in New York was asked to coax various diplomats into complaining to Kofi Annan that Kofi’s appointment of Supachai to the highest position in United Nations Conference on Trade and Development would hurt Surakiart’s chance of becoming the next UNSG!

And just before he lost the foreign affairs portfolio, Surakiart made a major bungle when he tried to force our ambassador in Washington to retain the services of two firms providing lobbying services, which had ties to US Vice President Dick Cheney. To our ambassador’s credit, not only did he refuse to sign the wasteful contracts, he also recommended that Surakiart withdraw from the race.

But such events are minor affairs compared to Surakiart’s dealings, directly or by proxy, with the Sri Lankan government.

Earlier this year, after the name of Jayantha Dhanapala was announced as Sri Lanka’s candidate for the UNSG job, the director-general of the South Asian Department of Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Sri Lankan ambassador to the ministry to hear Thailand’s, or should I say Surakiart’s, displeasure because of this announcement. The ambassador did not put up long with this gesture, and soon left. This policy of deliberate discourtesy continued when the Foreign Ministry rejected the ambassador’s request for extra security for his president for her short private visit to Bangkok on her way home from Tokyo.

After such unprofessional and unfriendly treatment of Sri Lanka, one could assume that Surakiart would not pursue this delicate issue further. However, early last month, Virachai Virameteekul, our vice minister of foreign affairs, who is known to be close to Surakiart, visited Colombo, ostensibly to preside over the Thai Foreign Ministry’s kathin ceremony. In reality his main purpose was to call on the Sri Lankan foreign minister, whom he met on November 4. During the private meeting, Virachai effectively offered this deal to the Sri Lankan side: if the country withdrew its candidate, Thailand would give Dhanapala any senior post in the UN that he wanted.

This astonishing proposal was rejected by Sri Lanka because, it was explained, its candidate was more than qualified to be UNSG. Perhaps Sri Lanka should have replied “We do not take bribes.”

After this event it must have dawned on Surakiart that a major faux pas has been committed. And so it became the task of our vice minister to formally explain to Sri Lanka that the offer was merely Surakiart’s “own personal initiative”.

With such chilling of Thai-Sri Lankan relations, it was not surprising that only a low-key official reception, without the participation of the countries’ foreign ministers, was held at Thailand’s Foreign Ministry on November 21, to mark 50 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

However, this was not the end of Surakiart’s attempt to get rid of Dhanapala. At the Asean Foreign Ministers Dinner in Kuala Lumpur on December 8, which he managed to gatecrash, Surakiart opined to the Asean foreign ministers that “many think the Sri Lankan is not a serious candidate”, adding his claim that the Nigerian foreign minister had “offered to talk to the Sri Lankan candidate to get him to withdraw”. If this is true, obviously our Nigerian brother was unaware of Surakiart’s failure to convince the Sri Lankan candidate to back down by other means. Otherwise, the Nigerian would not have dared to offer his services in the role of “big brother”. One may legitimately ask whether our African brother really knows what he may be getting into.

As an official candidate of a government which is known to be anti-UN, as well as of a regional organisation with one member annually being condemned by the UN for human rights violations, Surakiart surely has enough problems on his hands – problems which he needs to explain to the international community, especially to members of the UN Security Council who in reality are the ones will who determine who will be the next UNSG. I am therefore puzzled why he would want to aggravate further his already wobbly international standing by running such a clumsy, unethical and uncouth campaign.

One may conclude from his campaign that Surakiart not only wasted vast amounts of Thai taxpayers’ money, but also destroyed the good reputation of Thai diplomacy – both as a refined method of civilised communication and as an honest method of attaining foreign policy objectives.

Diplomacy is now an instrument of the maverick, the uncouth, the ignorant and the egotist, who apparently are primarily interested in fulfilling their personal ambitions.

Asda Jayanama was permanent representative of Thailand to the United Nations from 1996 to 2001.

Asda Jayanama

Special to The Nation