OIC

The one-year and half that the Foreign Ministry ran this campaign, they sent out so many Special Envoys who all came and reported the assurances of support to our candidate. The Foreign Ministry's assessment was that 30 countries had committed their support, many of them in writing. We are waiting to hear from the Foreign Ministry what they have to say now. The Foreign Affairs Adviser's expression of disappointed is just not good enough.

Someone must also answer for the selection of our candidate. I have no doubt that our candidate's background was one of the reasons for his rejection. The other two countries' nominees fitted into the environment of international diplomacy. We chose a former Health Minister without any background or experience of any international diplomacy. His activities within the country had made him controversial to everyone, even to the members of his own party. He is one who is known to raise controversy whenever and wherever he opens his mouth. A great deal of money was spent in campaigning for his candidature. This is public money and not an internal BNP business. As a member of the public, I demand that a commission be set up to find this out, for the debacle has also affected our image internationally. It is just not fair to blame the opposition for damaging our image abroad, if the government is responsible, it too must be made to answer.

The inquiry commission should also look into issues such as the Foreign Ministry's claim that 30 countries had committed its support for our candidate; whether we knew that behind our back Turkey's candidate had gathered the support of 32 countries. The FM himself was in Turkey only recently and did he or did he not get a feel that Turkey's candidature was that strong. He came back and instead gave an upbeat assessment of our candidate. Then, there have been reports that the Saudis also changed their preference from us to Turkey. We started our campaign on the conviction that we have the support of the Saudis. If the Saudis changed sides, someone needs to tell us why. The Commission should find these answers for us, for the sake of integrity of the Government and the Prime Minister. If someone or some group of people has taken us for a ride, which seem to include even the Prime Minister, then we better know who these people are.

The Foreign Ministry has a long record of playing the bluffing game. It has seldom won any candidatures save those that fall in our bags based on the dynamics of multilateral diplomacy. Let this OIC debacle be a test case for putting the Foreign Ministry in its proper place. Finally, I just hope that by backing our weak candidature we have not annoyed the Malaysians sufficiently for them to pay us back on the manpower issue.