Secretary or General ?

Shashi Tharoor, one of my favorite authors, and Under-Secretary-Genl, is up for the post of UN Secretary-General. Pending completion of Kofi Annan's second and final term, he will be the official Indian nominee.

Given the ineffectiveness of the U.N. in its founding mission of peace-keeping, I wonder if this is an honor or not. Even the name of the post is ambiguous about the powers it carries. Will someone please tell us what's a Secretary-General? Is he a secretary? Is he a general? Is he a secretary to a General, or just a secretary in general? If he had a secretary of his own (and I assume someone heading a large organization comprised of many member nations could afford it), what would he or she be called? I can see a lot of letters to the Secy-Genl are going to be re-routed to the secretarial pool at the UN. Incidentally, this absolves the Secy-Genl for any shortcomings of the UN. The man has to get complaint letters before he can fix 'em!

An article by Tharoor, the author of the Great Indian Novel, describes the post as a 'secular Pope'. Other interesting requirements of the job - the Secy-Genl has to be 'politically celibate without being politically virgin', and work with the aspirations of the Big Five while being above them. So in addition to being a secretary, the post also calls for 'celibate but not virgin'. I think I've seen that same job description at the local temping agency.

Now its a big bug for me that Tharoor is not viewed as a serious contender to the Thailand Deputy PM Suriakiart Sathirathaith, Sri Lankan diplomat Jayanatha Dhanapala, and South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.

Personally, I think Tharoor has an excellent chance of winning, even with all these contenders. Let me explain. If it is secretarial job, as I strongly suspect it might be, Tharoor as a writer will surely surpass others at typing. The others won't even know where the carbon paper goes in, I'll put my money on that.

The only serious threat is Pakistan's nominee Mrs Maleeha Lodhi, High Commissioner to UK. She has the additional attraction of being female, which, it has just occurred to me, secretaries almost always are. Drat!


(written when Shashi's nomination had just appeared in the press)