ARE THE UN ORGANISATIONS LOWERING THEIR STANDARDS?

By Darmitha-Kotte

The world has been made to understand that The UN symbolizes a world body that is there, for all nations & for noble deeds. Initially ofcourse, countries got together and formed the UN with very high ideals and lots of sweet sounding words of humanitarianism, poverty alleviation, fundamental rights, human rights, education programmes for the developing world etc etc. Today, the UN has become mostly a mouth-piece of the USA and a channel through which the US bulldozes its own personal agendas while the world looks on in horror!

In the good old days, only the best personalities with proven track records of positive and constructive contributions towards humanity were even considered for assignments within the UN. It was considered a great privilage and honour to work for a UN organization. Now we see signs of that quality and reputation deteriorating to rather low levels which is very sad indeed.

A news item in the Sinhala newspaper "Lakbima" of 19th September 2006 carried an article which mentioned that our former President Chandrika Kumaratunga was being offered a post of Director General for UNESCO and she will be in charge of education and poverty alleviation programmes in the South Asian region- God forbid! What are her credentials to earn such a position is a question many in Sri Lanka would ask given her miserable track record of destabilizing the whole education system in Sri Lanka together with her pal and confidante Dr. Tara de Mel. It was most fortunate for Sri Lanka that the "stars" changed at the nick of time & that Chandrika Kumaratunga had to, most unwillingly step down from her high-horse and leave the Presidency. If not, Sri Lanka would have faced one of her darkest periods in recent history. She had absolutely no respect for education or teachers in this country and did not even wince when she viciously suspended the services of school principals and teachers on trumped up charges. Dr. Tara de Mel carried out her instructions to the letter and even went to the extent of signing a fantastically expensive MoU with World Vision to hand over the administration of schools to them for them to carry on their venomous programme of unethical conversions and privatization of our system of education. Sri Lanka has been proud of her system of education and it only took the Tsunami and Dr. de Mel under the tutelage of Chandrika Kumaratunga to set a trap through which rural children will be deprived of proper education in Sri Lanka!

Tsunami Relief and poverty alleviation cannot be uppermost in the heart of an individual who never understood the problems of the ordinary person in the village. Thanks to Chandrika Kumaratunga's bungling of the Tsunami Relief housing programmes, Sri Lanka still have thousands of Tsunami victims living in temporary sheds one and a half years later. It is only now, that the programmes are being accelerated to find solutions to these innocent people. The most unproductive period in modern history in Sri Lanka was during the period in which Chandrika Kumaratunga served this country as their Executive President for 11 years. This was a period during which any citizen with an aorta of patriotism in their blood, with an aorta of feeling towards the preservation of our cultural heritage was labelled " extremists" or " nationalists" or what was even worse was the fact that she conspired to have them physically attacked to kill that sense of identity. Viciousness and vindictiveness were her forte.If these are the qualifications one needs to gain employment with a UN Agency- then we truly have reservations of what this world body is all about? Charm alone, is certainly not good enough especially if that charm was used on foreign dignitaries while her own Motherland suffered from her venom towards the nation.

If the UN wishes to tarnish the good name of The United Nations by offering employment to a personality such as Chandrika Kumaratunga, then it is they who will have to take the responsibility for all the messes that she will create and also the misappropriations that she will personally manipulate like what we have read in reports about amassing wealth and properties using public office. It would be best that her region of responsibility would be outside the South Asian region because she does not understand the complexities of this region. It would also be " a conflict of interest" since she is also planning to recommence her devastating political activities which will mean " death to Sri Lanka!" This will be done using her status as UNESCO representative in this country- Please re-think the wisdom of appointing her to overlook the South Asian region- it is upto the UN to make the final decision for the sake of its own reputation!