COVID-19 pandemic locks down UN General Assembly sessions, no jaunts for Lankans
When Sri Lankan delegates make their annual pilgrimage to the UN General Assembly sessions in New York every September, the visits have been routinely characterised by extravagant spending. This includes week- long or month- long stays in four and five star hotels, unlimited overseas phone calls, sumptuous dinners for friends and acquaintances and, in one instance, hard core porno movies in the hotel room – all at Sri Lankan tax payers' expense.
Some years ago, we not only singled out this heavy spending -– by politicians, their spouses and foreign ministry officials — but also reproduced screen shots of hotel invoices. The delegates, who are entitled to per diem and shared chauffeured limousines, usually make a beeline to tourist resorts on arrival, including Niagara Falls, Atlantic City casinos and even to Washington DC for guided White House tours. In some instances, the so- called UN delegates never even stepped into the UN building because they considered these visits holiday jaunts in the US.
But all that is not likely to happen this year because the coronavirus pandemic has brought the United Nations and the General Assembly session to a virtual standstill. The UN Secretariat building has been shut down since mid-March, and the UN campus will continue to remain a ghost town through end July – and perhaps till the end of this year – with nearly 3,000 staffers, delegates and journalists working, mostly from home.
Most meetings, including Security Council sessions, are taking place via video teleconferencing (VTC) while informal consultations are done remotely, along with virtual media briefings. Last week the UN hosted a virtual ministerial pledging conference with hardly a minister in sight.
The deadly pandemic has, most crucially, grounded the upcoming session of the General Assembly, an annual event which usually attracts more than 150 world leaders. It has also upended the live celebration of the 75th anniversary of the world body.
So, perhaps for the first time in the UN's 75- year history, most world leaders would be invited to address the General Assembly via pre- recorded video statements, mostly from their homes or their presidential palaces. The message particularly to ostracised world leaders – and those ‘ blacklisted’ by the US and denied visas — is clear: You don’t need a US visa to address the UN this year.
As of now, the decision is to have only two delegates from each country to be physically present in the cavernous General Assembly hall. So, this could still be an excuse to dispatch a couple of politicians or Foreign Ministry officials even though our Sri Lanka Mission is well staffed with six full- time diplomats to warm the seats in the Assembly Hall. Still, stay tuned for a two-member delegation from Colombo to justify an official UN visit this year by either a favoured politician or a bureaucrat.
Incidentally, a New York newspaper once ran a story of how an African head of state, along with his delegates, took time off to visit a strip club featuring lap dancers. When one of the strippers got temptingly close to the head of state offering him a sensuous lap dance, one of his burly security officers, jumped into the middle of the act, shouting: "Don’t touch the Prime Minister." Mercifully, he did not say “Our Prime Minister is an untouchable.”