There was once an unspoken rule in public life that when trust is broken and a reputation sullied, the person in question should depart and save others from embarrassment.
We no longer live in such a world or, more properly, we now imagine that to demand honour in public life is romantic fiction.
It has become unreal to expect from public officials what Shakespeare made Mark Antony declare: “If I lose mine honour, I lose myself.”
Instead, the unruffled contemporary norm is pass the buck, deny evidence and brazenly defy those whose trust has been broken due to poor judgment, ineptness or malfeasance.
We’ve seen ample evidence of this in the AdScam debacle in Ottawa. So, too, we recently heard the pithy response of Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, when asked if he would resign following the release of the second interim report of the Volcker committee on the Oil-for-Food scandal: “Hell, no.”
The secretary general’s role requires someone able to persuade member states to conduct themselves according to the UN Charter. It involves drawing upon one’s personal integrity.
The Oil-for-Food scandal has not only stained the reputation of the UN—which had never recovered from its failure to prevent the genocide in Rwanda—but exposed great ineptness and possible corruption at its highest levels.
Though the program began under Annan’s predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, it was under Annan’s watch this humanitarian relief project for Iraqis became corrupted to the benefit of Saddam Hussein and his despotic regime.
Annan’s former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, was retired by the secretary general on the day he admitted to the Volcker committee that he had authorized the destruction of three years of documents in his office that might have been incriminating. Dilip Nair, head of the UN’s office of internal oversight, was found to have misappropriated oil funds to hire an assistant that did not work for the program. Nair’s retirement is expected in April.
Then there is the former chief of Oil-for Food, Benon Sevan, who retired in disgrace and is now under investigation on suspicion of illicit gains. Similarly, Joseph Stephanides, former chief of the UN’s sanctions branch, was suspended for violating procurement regulations.
The case of Kofi’s son, Kojo Annan, hired by the Swiss-based company that was awarded the UN contract for Oil-for-Food, brought the whiff of the scandal into the secretary-general’s household.
Annan has repeatedly dismissed any responsibility for inadequate supervision of his office. Meanwhile, other scandals, some unproven, are emerging—such as the resignation of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, over allegations of sexual harassment, and stories out of Congo accusing UN peacekeepers of inappropriate sex with war refugees—suggesting something is rotten within the UN system.
All of this is sadly consistent with the organization’s record of failures from Rwanda and the Balkans to Oil-for-Food and Darfur. The UN security system can only work when the five great powers wielding veto in the Security Council are persuaded to go beyond their national interests and act on behalf of the world community. The failed legacy of the League of Nations hangs over the UN. Singing the virtues of multilateralism has never helped victims of tyrannies.
For UN reform to be credible, the secretary general needs a reputation as great as his task—persuading the world body’s members that national interest must not trump collective interest.
Annan has shown instead the job he holds is much too big for him, and the best he might do is resign and save the world from further embarrassment.
?2005 – Salim Mansur is a columnist at Canada’s Sun Media. His column appears at here with Salim Mansur’s express permission by special arrangement with him.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
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