UN race: It’s time for Dhanapala to bow out gracefully

The UN Security Council a few weeks ago conducted a straw poll among the four candidates declared so far to succeed Kofi Anan. The Security Council has five Permanent Veto holding Members (the USA, China, Russia, UK and France) and the 10 non-permanent Members, Ghana, Tanzania and Congo Brazzaville (from Africa) Denmark, Slovakia, Greece (from Europe), Argentina, Peru (from Latin America, Japan and Qatar (from Asia)

The central purpose of the poll was to determine which of the four candidates have enough support to go forward and which of the candidates coming at the bottom of the poll should graciously drop out without embarrassment to their nominating countries.

One "no" from any veto power is the kiss of death and the end of that candidate's campaign, even if he has got 14 yes votes from the other countries.
In this regard the result of the straw poll was revealing.

Sri Lanka's candidate had six votes of discouragement (i.e. go away) and four votes of no opinion (i.e. we are reluctant to support you). Given that there are five veto powers, the Sri Lankan candidate can only continue his campaign if he is absolutely certain that all the five votes he got, were all from the veto powers.

This implies that the rich and powerful nations who are the veto powers all supported the Sri Lankan candidate and all the other countries from the developing world of Africa, Asia Latin America and even Japan - a country favourable to Sri Lanka- either voted against him or had no opinion. Hence, it could be concluded that the entire non aligned movement voted against Sri Lanka.

The Sunday Times of July 30 reported that the Sri Lankan candidate believes that the countries that voted against him were Argentina, Denmark, France (A Veto Power !) Greece, Slovakia and the UK (another Veto Power!!) This article also goes on to say that China is the only veto power to support him and that the USA had no opinion and did not support him.

One doesn’t need rocket science to work out that if only one veto power is supporting the Sri Lankan candidate then that candidature is a dead duck.

It is no secret that the USA wants an outsider and not an insider to take over. The US has consistently and quietly said all throughout the campaign that they will veto a UN insider. This rules out the 68 year old Sri Lankan candidate who was an Asst. Sec. General of the UN as it does the Indian candidate. The US is against the Sri Lankan candidate because of his support for a ban on small arms - a constitutional and controversial issue in the USA.

Following the straw poll Ambassador John Bolton the US Representative at the UN invited those who had done badly to drop out by commenting that" the four candidates would now be able to judge for themselves clearly whether to continue in the race and others who may be considering joining the race may do so".

At a time when Sri Lanka needs strong support and friends as she faces the gravest of crisis with escalating violence with the LTTE; it bodes ill for Sri Lanka's international standing and reputation, to have its candidate vetoed and voted against by 10 out of 15 members of the Security Council, the most powerful multilateral organization the world. It would augur well for Sri Lanka to find a suitable replacement for Dhanapala and also for Dhanapala himself to gracefully withdraw from the race in which he does not appear to have the slightest chance.