This week, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan announced that he was promoting his Chief of Staff, Englishman Mark Malloch Brown, to the post of Deputy Secretary General.
This an interesting, but hardly surprising appointment. After all, Kofi Annan’s central achievement during his years at the helm of the world body has been raising corruption, nepotism, scandal and now, it seems, cronyism, to new heights.
You see, Annan brought in Malloch Brown to rescue the ailing chief when he was implicated in the massive Oil for Food scandal. Brown performed admirably, smearing just enough lipstick on the pig to save Annan’s bacon. Now he’s been rewarded with a plum assignment. Besides the enhanced title, of course, Malloch Brown will benefit from an increased salary and even more perks. But Malloch Brown’s long-term interests are also well taken care of. Thanks to big promotion, he’ll pull down greatly enhanced retirement benefits when he is forced to retire this fall after the election of Annan’s successor.
Want to get some sense of just how sketchy this deal really is?
At a meeting on Wednesday, U.N. bureaucrats – no strangers to gaming the system – greeted Annan with jeers and boos. According to the Inter Press News Service, “Rosemary Waters, president of the 5,000-strong U.N. Staff Union, bluntly told Annan Tuesday he was violating his own sacred principles of ‘accountability and transparency’ in U.N. appointments. … Waters said the appointment of Mark Malloch Brown as the new deputy secretary general (DSG) came as ‘a surprise’ because there was ‘no transparency in the recruitment process.’”
We realize that it’s barely news anymore when the Secretary General conducts himself like the tin-horn dictator of a third-rate banana republic, but with each new tale of corruption and scandal, the U.N. underscores its impotence and irrelevance.
Oh, and by the way. Just before Annan got busy promoting his buddy Mr. Brown and assuring his soon-to-be-former Chief of Staff a comfortable retirement, the Secretary General offered his opinion on the outbreak of Muslim violence in response to cartoon depicting Muhammad.
Annan and the U.N., that bastion of strength, integrity and effectiveness, in response to the mayhem, called a meeting — at the Ritz-Carlton (natch) in Doha, Qatar.
There was much serious and high-minded discussion. Annan pled for calm. And nothing happened. Indeed, Annan couldn’t even bring himself to condemn the violence. Here’s his take:
“It is important that we realize that the problem is not with the faith, but with a small group of the faithful — the extremists who tend to abuse and misinterpret the faith to support their cause, whether they derive it from the (Holy) Qur’an, the Torah or the Gospel.”
No question. This is a guy who has his priorities straight: Sympathy for perpetrators of violence and good jobs with great benefits for his friends.
Maybe we should keep him on for another term.