AS WE RETURN to the interview table inside the cool and relatively dark interior of the State Room, Lee, rather suddenly, though quietly, asks to be excused for a few minutes, to visit “the loo”, as he puts it, and to check up on a few hot incoming emails in his office down the corridor and around the bend.
Suddenly Mdm. YY suggests that the session end right now.
“You’ve had three hours,” she says emphatically.
I am ungracious and unmoved. I am a pushy, vulgar American journalist, after all, and, oddly, somewhat proud of it. So I say something like, no way, I know you’re trying to spare your boss from over-extending himself; he clearly is not only in considerable pain but running low on octane. But tenaciously I hold my ground, explaining that this interview is for history (how many more like this will he grant?) and I need every minute with him I can get. I argue that this effort is for a book, not a magazine or newspaper article. It needs everything LKY can give it.
Hers had been a worthy foray, and she took the abrupt but no-kidding push-back well. But I think she is not used to being pushed around by mere journalists. This is, after all, Singapore, not Los Angeles.
Sitting next to her and taking the oral battle in without making a sound is Chee Hong Tat, who has the actual title of Principal Private Secretary to Minister Mentor Lee. I am later to learn that he has an exquisite sense of humor. During the exchange with Mdm. YY, I think he was trying very hard to suppress a laugh while not appearing to side with either one of us.
Suddenly a somehow refreshed LKY comes back into the room after perhaps a 15-minute absence. His energy level seems higher now. I do wonder why. And, as if he’d somehow overheard the tussle between Mdm. YY and myself over ending this second session earlier than scheduled (was there a bug under the table that he could monitor from his office? Nah, I’m being silly), he looks at me and says not to worry, “We’ll finish today.”
“I’ve got only three or four more major topics.”
“Go ahead.”
“Well, how long are you giving?”
“We’ll finish today.” He says this emphatically.
I am happy, but puzzled. Did he take an upper or something? Nah, that’s just the silly American headline-grasping journalist letting his tabloidian imagination go down-market.
But then, before I get going again, he says to me that he has something to tell me about the UN secretary-general job that’s not a joke.
The background is this: by the middle of his second term as UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan was viewed by some of the big powers as a big-time nuisance—a showboating Third World blowhard. The Bush administration, for one, was looking for a successor who would be less flamboyant. So they began sounding out Singapore about the possible availability of Goh Chok Tong, who had stepped down in 2004 after 14 years as the successful prime minister and successor to Lee himself. At that point Goh, the quiet, hard-working, thoughtful economist, was far and away America’s first choice for the position to replace Annan.
LKY goes on to explain: “So I am in Korea and South Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-moon knew that the Americans were supporting Goh Chok Tong for the job. So, when Goh retired, they wanted him to take this job on.
“Ban Ki-moon invited me to a lunch, gave me a swank lunch and said, is your colleague running for it? I said, no. He said, are you sure? I said, absolutely. He said, why? I said, it is not a job that he is fitted for. He’s got to please irreconcilable masters, Americans, Chinese, Russians, never mind the British and the French. I mean, it is too much for him and he is not going to do it. What good does it do Singapore, whereas he can do much in Singapore and for Singapore.
“So, Ban came to Singapore to see Goh Chok Tong. And Goh Chok Tong confirmed that he is not running for the UN job. So, he knows that I am a straight talker.”
“And then Ban announces and he runs. He gets the job.”
“He gets the job because the Americans decided to back him, and the Chinese also backed him, and that was that.”
“That is right. Do you think Ban will get a second term?” The likable former South Korean foreign minister was getting a lot of critical heat in New York as this interview is occurring.
“Ban Ki-moon? Possibly, because who else can the Americans back?”
“Yes, that is right, and who can Americans and Chinese agree on? Well, I don’t know. I like him very much and have gotten to know him a little bit.”
“No, he is, I would say, qualified for the job. He’s been foreign minister of South Korea. He knows the frustration of working on problems that cannot be solved because you’ve got to try and make the effort and placate your constituency, in this case, the Security Council and the General Assembly, and he does that. And so, who can they find better? Can they find a Kofi Annan? Even if they could, the Americans will say, no.”
At the time of the interview, Lee’s views paralleled all that I had been able to find out about Ban and the UN and the roiling and often ugly international—and UN headquarters—politics behind that horrible job.