For much of last year, the prime minister of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra, touted his foreign minister, Surakiart Sathirathai, as a possible successor to Kofi Annan as United Nations secretary general when Annan's term expires in 2006.

Thaksin pressed Thai foreign ministry officials to back Surakiart, a career civil servant and foreign service official. He got numerous journalists to build up Surakiart, a dull, humorless bureaucrat. He got the ASEAN bloc of ten Southeast Asian nations to name Surakiart its candidate for the top UN post.

The bulk of the public, however, commenting in the opinion pages of local newspapers, insisted that Surakiart had no chance of getting the top UN post.

The main complaint about Surakiart was the blind support he frequently expressed for the hated Burmese junta.

Another common complaint was that Surakiart did not measure up to great statesmen from Asia, like U Thant of Burma, who was the only Asian to hold the top UN post.

Beginning his second term as prime minister earlier this year, Thaksin replaced Surakiart as foreign minister. Surakiart remains in the cabinet as a deputy prime minister responsible for the foreign ministry.

Surakiart seems to believe that he can still get the top UN post. A few notorious lackys - retired career foreign service officials and newspaper hacks - are still touting him for it. But the greater public and most journalists and editors have proclaimed Surakiart's bid dead and buried.

Since Surakiart never merited the top UN job, why did Thaksin tout him for it?

Many believe that Thaksin simply meant to impress his business and political cronies with his ability to build up and mentor a loyal follower.

Others believe that Thaksin meant to demonstrate that he could successfully take on the UN, which was critical of his flagrant abuses of human rights, and even go one better, take control of it.

Actually, Thaksin and Surakiart did not care about the top UN post. They were not interested in international politics or statesmanship. They were not trying to silence critics. They were merely reacting to the Kofigate scandal. They heard of millions of dollars siphoned from UN aid by Annan and his family and they wanted in on the take. They figured the UN post would give them a chance at the money.

Indeed, the president of the United States, George W. Bush, and his pals in business and government, who consider Thaksin one of the gang, wanted him to go after the UN secretary generalship so that they could loot the UN as Annan and his family did.

So determined were Bush and his cronies that when it appeared likely that Thaksin and Surakiart had no chance of getting the top UN post they pushed Annan to appoint another Thai, Supachai Panitchpakdi, current director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), to the post of secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), a position considered by some to be second in rank and authority to the UN secretary general. (The appointment was abrupt and wholly unexpected - and many UN members accused Annan of high-handedness.)

Suriya Newin
Bangkok
Email: suriyanewin@yahoo.com

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