ROME – At the recently concluded FAO COuncil, the UN agency’s cunning director general, evidently acting on orders from his masters in the Chinese Communist Party, engineered a ‘coup d’etat’ with the complicity of the slippery Chairman Hans Hoogeveen, whose credentials include being fired as treasurer of the Dutch Catholic Church in Rome, FAO sources said. Qu effectively turned the Governing body into a raucous circus in his bid to obtain a further two years at the helm of FAO over opposition from the United States and the EU.

 Under current constitutional rules, the director general may serve for a maiximum of two terms of four years each. But with the assistance of the veteran Indian hatchet man and playboy Rakesh Muthoo, earning his keep as putative new chef de cabinet, and the Legal Counsellor Rugarabamu, recently brought and bought into the Chinese communist scheme with a promotion, more money and new title as ADG, Qu made a last minute proposal to the Council to amend the Constitution so that he DG may serve henceforth terms of six and four years for a total of 10 years. Qu evidently expects the new rule to be adopted at the Conference of 2025.

 Qu evidently wanted to manufacture rules for the benefit of himself and the senior staff members he used to stage the coup de main, diplomatic sources said. The underlying idea is that at the end of his current term in 2027 Qu will be able to runa gain either for a further two years or perhaps even for another six year term if further chicanery is deployed. He could then emulate previous DGs who bent the rules to erve for as long as 18 years.

 During a divisice and acrimonious debate at the Dec. 2-6 Council session, in which 38 members of the Council out of 49 rejected the proposal, the pious Chairman of the Council, former ambassador Hoogeveen, decided that the item be deleted from the agenda, and this was accepted. Holier than thou Hoogy said he would conduct 'bilateral discussions' with members and the matter could be discussed at the Council in April this year.

 However next day Qu, with support from only four proxies, India, Cameroon, Pakistan represented by octagenerian fixer Khalid Mehboob, and Indonesia, decided to storm the session to drag on the debates and re-open the contentious issue of extending his Comunist dictatorship inside the troubled hunger-fighting agency.

 It then fell to he unctuous Mehdi of Cameroon, renowned for cravenly dropping his candidature against Qu in return for Beijing paying off Cameroon’s foreign debt, to argue strenuously that the Council had no authority to remove an item from the provisional agenda.

 This obvious blunder was not corrected by the officials of the Secretariat in attendance, notably by the bought off Legal Counsellor who as a result has lost all credibility, reaffirming the old adage that everyone has their price. Eventually the matter was left on the agenda but only will be discussed in April.

 Hoogeveen’s hypocritical complicity was evident in the irregular move. Western diplomats are baffled why he accepted the over ruling of a decision taken the day before by an overwhelming majority of Council Members. Dutch diplomatic sources remarked that Hoogy’s willingness to bend the rules had been noted when he was fired recently from his post as trusted treasurer of the Dutch Catholic Church in Rome.

 U.S. congressmen already have lambasted Qu’s efforts to perpetuate his imperial rule at FAO and assume that the Trump administration may have something to say, though on past form it can take a year or more for a new admimnistration to appoint a new ambassador to the UN agencies to replace the current Biden appointee, expected to pack his bags soon after a very short tenure.

 jf