By Ayca Ariyoruk
1 March 2006
The man who might be the next U.N. Chief likes his Pad Thai spicy, with shrimp, and readily confirmed that this staple of Thai restaurants is not just an American invention. Indeed, when we met at the Willard Inter Continental Hotel in Washington DC on February 13, Dr. Surakiart Sathirathai, Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand, expressed regret that we would be unable to sample the culinary delights of his country in that location. Our meeting was one of many he had conducted on a week-long tour to promote his candidacy for secretary general, having hit London and Paris en-route to Washington. The trip also gave him the chance to spend time with his son, who, following in his father’s footsteps, is currently a student in Boston. Surakiart says “ Boston has a special place in my heart. It is where I started my family and where our son was born.”
Surakiart is one of three candidates openly running for the post of the United Nations secretary general. The other two declared candidates are Sri Lanka’s former Ambassador to Washington Mr. Jayantha Dhanapala, [view UNReformWatch No. 7] and Mr. Ban Ki-Moon, South Korea’s Foreign Minister. Our conversation began with what is by now a must-ask question - “why do you want this job?” “I look at the issue of reform as a challenge and I believe in multilateralism. Having led successful reform initiatives in the past, both in the public and private sector, I want to take on that challenge for the United Nations. The U.N. has to be the paragon of good governance. For that, it has to be effective, accountable and transparent, and undergo a reform process which will not be painless and will require unpopular decisions.”
Boston to Bangkok
Surakiart (48) received his PhD from Harvard Law School and speaks English, Thai, and French. He began his career as an academic, teaching classes on foreign investment and international financial institutions at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn Law School, while advising the Thai government on economic policy. At the age of 37, he became Thailand’s youngest finance minister, and shortly afterward was appointed minister of foreign affairs. He held this post until after the sweeping re-election victory of the Thai Rak Thai (Thai loves Thai) Party in 2005, when Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra appointed Surakiart his deputy. Just last week, the Prime Minister, faced with large scale street demonstrations prompted by allegations of corruption, called for a snap election in April 2006. Unlike businessman turned politician Mr. Thaksin, Surakiart is a scholar and a diplomat, who made a political career by lending his expertise to politicians. Surakiart thinks that rallies and demonstrations are “normal symptom of democracy”. It is clear that he is keen to distance himself from the political turmoil back home and prefers to focus on his candidacy. “I am proud to be Thailand’s and ASEAN’s [Association of 10 South East Asian Nations-Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam] candidate. I have been campaigning for that position for the past year - openly running, talking, and listening. I endorse a transparent selection process, I attach great importance to good governance and democracy, and that’s why I declared my candidacy early, because I want people to know about me in a transparent way.”
Will a smaller U.N. be stronger?
We turn our attention to some specific issues that the next secretary general is likely to face. With rumors of privatization of U.N. jobs percolating, management reform seems the obvious place to start. “I want U.N. to do more and only an efficient U.N. can do more…There are areas, in which the private sector can do a better job than the public sector. If the private sector has a comparative advantage, it makes sense to privatize it....” As the secretary general, Surakiart will apply lessons drawn from his own experience of reform, both in the public and the private sector. As the Dean of Chulalongkorn University Law School, he privatized various supporting services of the school, despite strict governmental regulations. He restructured the management of a national bank, when serving as the Chairman, by replacing the members of the board with finance professionals and instituting an early retirement program to replace top managers, cutting expenses by twenty percent. During his tenure as the foreign minister, he joined the government policy of “friendly farewell” program in all departments, which offered remuneration, rewards, and ranks for employees willing to take early retirement. A similar program has been proposed by Kofi Annan as part of management reforms at the United Nations, which Surakiart supports, saying “If you don’t streamline the organization, then you can’t answer to your stakeholders.” After leaving the finance ministry, Surakiart assisted various corporations with the overhaul of their operations. One such corporation was the Thai Oil Company, which he took over after it filed for bankruptcy. By moving the company’s headquarters from Bangkok to the location of its factory, he reduced the company’s expenses dramatically without affecting workers benefits. It was an unpopular move among managers and other employees, but Surakariat explains that it was necessary; “We couldn’t ask for a break on our debt if we continued to enjoy the big offices in Bangkok.” Middle management is of great importance to Surakiart, especially at times of change. “Policy makers have to make sure that their policy of reform is well communicated, from the top management through the middle to the lower management. You have to make sure your policy is well understood at every level.”
How does he feel about the idea of financing U.N. agencies and programs entirely by voluntary funding? “Voluntary funding has been very effective because it is very well focused, but it suffers from lack of predictability and sustainability. Regular funding on the other hand can be seen as the one that creates complacency. So the way I look at it is that we have to have a right balance between regular and voluntary funding. You can’t have one without the other.”
Role of the secretary general: Manager of ideas or business?
Surakiart believes that the role of the secretary general should be to broker peaceful resolutions to problems through frequent consultations and steady accumulation of trust. “I believe in preventive diplomacy as a tool for conflict avoidance. The good offices of the secretary general have successfully mediated countless conflicts. Of course, this has limits in terms of stopping war or violence. If we implement preventive diplomacy, we stay ahead of the problem and make sure that the problem does not arise, and if it does arise, it is more manageable”
Aside from being a top diplomat, upholding the moral authority of the world, Surakiart believes that the secretary general has to put in place good teams “both on the management and on the policy sides. I support the idea of having a chief operating officer. But the COO of the U.N. would not be exactly like a COO of a company; the U.N.’s chief operating officer would have to consult regularly with member states whereas a COO of a company would not need to do so with its share holders. The secretary general must also have the support of a strong group of policy analysts, to ensure that he has all the information he needs to make decisions as a top diplomat. To have peace, the secretary general should be able to manage change at all fronts.”
The discussion moves to the never-ending complaints of micromanagement of the Secretariat by member states. Surakiart says “accountability to the General Assembly should not mean micromanagement of the secretary general. I believe in a “can do attitude” and in working around constrains. “The can-do-attitude has always been my motto and my principle. As a Law School junior faculty member 20 years ago, faced with a lack of overseas phone call facilities, I even went to the Chinese noodle shop next door to make overseas phone calls to contact foreign university scholars to implement our international programs. We must be inventive to overcome constraints and get things done.”
So what does he think of the so-called North and South divide that seems to be blocking progress on U.N. reform? “We should not polarize the issue of U.N. reform or any issue at all. There are issues that transcend North and South. The threat posed by nuclear terrorism, pandemics, disaster relief - are they North-South issues, or South-South, or North-North? The reform of the United Nations, should aim to unite the nations; not to divide them.” Surakiart elaborates with the example of the Asia Cooperation Dialogue, a partnership initiative he launched as Foreign Minister of Thailand in 2002. “ Asia is an extremely diverse continent and everybody claimed it was impossible to have pan-Asian cooperation. But we aimed to leave bilateral issues behind and concentrate on areas where cooperation was possible. After four years, we have 28 countries – from west, central, south, south-east and north-east Asia. You can’t expect 28 countries to agree on one project; because we are so different. So you have six countries participating in one project, 15 countries in a second, and 20 in a third. You have Pakistani and Indian ministers sitting across from each other, but they are not talking about Kashmir, they are talking about development. What we have constructed is a web of cooperation.”
Poverty alleviation: does foreign aid harm developing economies?
Surakiart’s drive for intra-Asian cooperation was a result of his hallmark policy of “prosper thy neighbor’. Describing how this policy could be applied in the U.N. context, he says, “I believe in South-South cooperation as much as North-South partnership, and the U.N. can stimulate this by coordinating the exchange of best practices among the developing countries, something that hasn’t been done much. Sharing responsibility for infrastructure, developing new products, linking markets and strengthening joint participation in the international economy, these are all ways in which regional linkages can be beneficial to developing countries.” Turning to economic policy and poverty alleviation, he addresses the charge that foreign aid often does more harm than good in developing countries, by giving governments too much control over investment and underpinning corruption. Surakiart says that a well-functioning U.N. could play a vital role in resolving this problem. “A reformed U.N. should be proactive and induce cooperation from recipient countries to come up with national action plan. Once we establish that, a program of trade and aid is possible, so that donor countries can have confidence that assistance given directly or through the U.N. agencies is dispersed in an accountable, transparent and effective manner.”
Is the U.N. relevant?
Shortly before the interview with Surakiart, Senator Richard G. Lugar, Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had delivered an address to the Security Council in which he stated that the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the scarcity of energy supplies are the two top priority areas for U.S.-U.N. cooperation. When asked to respond to these U.S. concerns, Surakiart said “Senator Lugar is right. It is very disappointing that the Outcome Document did not stress the issue of nuclear proliferation and disarmament enough”. On the energy issue, he pointed out a number of areas in which the U.N. could be more involved. Speaking from his experience as Chairman of Thailand’s Petroleum Explorations and Production Public Company, Surakiart said that the first of these is in identifying new sources of oil. “There are some areas that have been neglected because they are small. The U.N. can bring together countries with different expertise, to make sure that we do not overlook any neglected supply.” Second, the U.N. can encourage countries to save energy, by supporting research on new technologies for transportation and construction. Third, in the area of alternative energy, the U.N. can be an incubator of ideas and experience around the world. “For example, how can knowledge and experience of ethanol energy be applied to Asia and Africa? When the price of energy goes up, countries will search for ways to work together. Thailand is now working with Brazil and Australia to pool sugar cane supplies and produce ethanol. The U.N. is the right forum to expand these cooperative initiatives.”
What was your role in Thailand’s response to the tsunami?
Thailand’s effective response to the South East Asian Tsunami, which hit the country in January 2005, was praised by the international community. As Foreign Minister at the time, Surakiart opened an emergency office to help all foreign embassy personnel to find relatives and friends, and issued emergency identification cards for their departure. But to him “the most important experience was visiting patients with my wife, foreigners and Thais alike, assuring them that we would help them find loved ones, telling them not to worry that they had no money or had lost travel documents, and promising that we would take care of getting them back to their homeland”. He goes on to say that partnership with the United Nations and with the United States was crucial to the success of the rescue and rehabilitation missions. “Colin Powell, then Secretary of State, called me the day the tsunami struck and offered help. Within less than six hours the first rescue plane arrived.” Critics said that Surakiart went overboard with his offer of aid to the United States following the devastation of the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina in September of 2005, suggesting he was looking to build friends in Washington to gain support for his candidacy as a secretary general. He dismissed the suggestion out of hand. “We help in any way that we can help, although it can be only a very small amount compared to what the U.S. offered us. We have helped other countries wealthier than ourselves, such as Japan after the earthquake in Kobe in 1995.”
“I do not oppose theInternational Criminal Court”
Given the wide press coverage claiming his opposition to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the interview would not be complete without addressing this one critical question. Surakiart responds “I do not oppose the ICC at all; personally I am in favor of it. As secretary general, I would promote the ICC. Human rights are very important and in my view the ICC is a part of that. Thailand’s problem with the ICC lies in the constitution, where it is provided that the King, as the head of state, is ‘inviolable’. Subjecting the head of state to the jurisdiction of the ICC is a matter that needs further discussion in order to be settled with the provisions of the Thai Constitution, the legal system of the country, and the opinion of all legislators.”
Ayca Ariyoruk is a Research Fellow at the Center. The Center does not endorse any particular candidate, but works to promote a public element to the selection of the secretary general.