The New York Times: Bulgaria's Bokova the Right Head for UNESCO*

Views on BG | September 28, 2009, Monday // 08:22
Bulgaria: The New York Times: Bulgaria's Bokova the Right Head for UNESCO* Irina Bokova, 57, defeated Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosny after a suspenseful and drawn-out race, sealing victory in the fifth round of balloting at the organization's Paris headquarters. Photo by BGNES

The New York Times
Editorial

The race was beset by controversy and the voting went to five rounds. But Unesco made the right choice Tuesday night in selecting Irina Bokova, a Bulgarian diplomat, as its new director general. She will be the first woman and the first eastern European to head up the United Nations agency, which is meant to promote culture, architectural protection, education, press freedom and other issues around the world.

The favorite, until late in the race, had been Farouk Hosny. A painter and long time culture minister in Egypt, he would have become the first Arab in the post, another first to be celebrated. But Mr. Hosny's close association with Egypt's autocratic President Hosni Mubarak raised questions about where he would stand on questions of censorship and human rights. His public statement in the Egyptian Parliament that he would personally burn any Israeli book found in the Alexandria library, Egypt's most important, meant that he was clearly unfit for the job.

Mr. Hosny tried hard to disown his comments, writing in the French newspaper Le Monde that they were made without "intention or premeditation," and should be viewed in the context of his indignation at the suffering of the Palestinian people. After the vote he blamed a conspiracy "cooked up in New York" by the world's Jews.

Ms. Bokova brought her own baggage. Critics - including some in her own country - argued that she should be disqualified because her father, Georgi Bokov, edited Bulgaria's leading Communist newspaper and because of her own former membership in the Communist Party.

We believe that she was the right choice. She played an active role in Bulgaria's political transformation from Soviet satellite to European Union member. That should be a strong asset in leading an organization badly buffeted in the past by ideological storms. In her long career as a diplomat, including a brief stint as foreign minister and her current position as Bulgaria's ambassador to France and its representative at Unesco, she has demonstrated a quiet and effective professionalism.

Unesco is one of the U.N.'s most prominent and influential agencies, yet its ideological forays and mismanagement in the 1970s and 1980s led the United States and Britain to withdraw. Both have since returned. Unesco has an important role to play. Ms. Bokova seems well qualified to lead it.


* Original title as published in September 27 edition of The New York Times "The Right Head for Unesco"

 

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