Ambassador Pierre Schori of Sweden and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.  Amb. Schori, currently a Visiting Professor at Adelphi University, New York, was Sweden’s ambassador to the United Nations from September 2000 to September 2004.

 

 

 

Europeans, Citing Concerns of Possible Irregularities, to Send Elections Observers to the U.S.

  By Ambassador Pierre Schori 

Amb.PierreSchori@MaximsNews.com 

                                               

          UNITED NATIONS --  22 October 2004 / www.MaximsNews.com  / In February 2002 the election observation team from the European Union was declared persona non grata by the Mugabe regime, and as the chief E U observer I was expelled from Zimbabwe. 

Obviously the authorities feared a repetition of the European observation in the 2000 parliamentary elections. 

I led that team also, and we could successfully follow the campaign during several weeks before, during and after those elections. 

Our negative evaluation of the ruling party’s fear-and-smear campaign did not endear us with the regime. 

In 2002 the stakes were higher, given the fact that these were presidential elections and that Robert Mugabe himself was facing the people’s verdict. 

Back at the U N in New York, shortly after my expulsion, I received a letter from the new American ambassador John Negroponte. 

On his official stationery he wished me welcome back from Zimbabwe and added: “Also, on behalf of the U.S. government, I want to extend an invitation to you to observe our elections any time you wish!”

He was certainly joking and I never believed that the U S would ever get into a “Zimbabwean” situation and invite foreign observers. 

Election observation has however become more and more the practice since the fall of apartheid and Soviet Communism. 

In 1990 the members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (the OSCE) signed the so-called Copenhagen Document, in which it is assumed, among other things, that individual states have the obligation to provide access for OSCE observers at polling station level. 

The U.S. is also a signatory.

And to my surprise, this year a large group of European observers will be deployed throughout a number of key states in America. 

After having been told by the U N Secretary General that their request to have the U N monitoring the U S elections could not be granted, as a government invitation is required, thirteen Democrats on the Hill turned to Secretary of State Colin Powell asking him to invite the OSCE.  

Mr. Powell agreed, and thus the OSCE and its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) undertook a Needs Assessment Mission (NAM), of the same kind that the E U did in Zimbabwe, to Washington, D. C. between September 7 and 10. 

The purpose was to identify relevant pre-election issues. The OSCE/ODIHR’s most recent observation missions were to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. 

The 28 September report of the NAM to the U S noted “concerns expressed with regard to the right to vote, and the possibility that this right may not be evenly applied or protected throughout the country.” 

They also registered the concern that software used in the new voting machines had not been made available for domestic independent public scrutiny. 

More seriously, the NAM remarked that the option of out-of-country absentee voters in some states to waive the secrecy of their vote and to fax their marked ballots was not consistent with the principle of the secrecy of the vote as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and OSCE commitments.  

Acknowledging the vibrant civil society in the United States, the NAM referred to concerns regarding the so-called suppression of the vote, such as inaccurate voter registers, purges of the register intended to remove ex-felons in some states which may also deregister persons with no criminal record, inaccurate voter information, and cases of voter intimidation. 

The NAM also quotes a report by the MIT and California Institute of Technology which estimates that 4 to 6 million voters could have been disenfranchised during the 2000 elections. 

Other concerns and particularities, such as the Electoral College, are presented in the NAM report. See www. OSCE.org/ODIHR/elections.

Based on the report the OSCE/ODIHR decided to establish an Election Observation Mission, composed of some 100 observers, to be deployed throughout a sampling of states. In addition, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly has also expressed its intention to send observers.

 

Ambassador Jean PIERRE Olov SCHORI

Amb.PierreSchori@MaximsNews.com 

 

Born in Norrköping, Sweden, in 1938.

His mother was Swedish and his father Swiss 

Married to Maud EDGREN-SCHORI,

M.A.S.W, Licentiate of Philosophy in Social Work, Stockholm University

Mr. Schori has three children

Education

1962                            Master of Arts, Modern Languages and Political Science, University of Lund

 

Professional Experiences

1965-1968                   Deputy International Secretary for the Social Democratic Party

1968-71                       International Secretary for the Social Democratic Party

1971-1972                   First Secretary, Ministry for Foreign Affairs

1973-1976                                                       Foreign Policy Advisor in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Olof Palme

1976-1982                   International Secretary for the Social Democratic Party

1982-1991                   Permanent Under-Secretary of State, Ministry for Foreign Affairs

1991-1994                   Member of Parliament, Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Spokesperson for the Social Democratic Party on Foreign Affairs

1994-1996                   Minister for International Development Co-operation and Deputy Foreign Minister for Co-operation with Central and Eastern Europe, including Russia and the Baltic States

1996-1999                   Minister for International Development Co-operation, Migration and Asylum Policy and Deputy Foreign Minister

1999-2000                   Member of European Parliament, leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Group and Spokesperson for the Socialist Group on Foreign Affairs, President of the Parliament ´s Committee for relations with Japan

2000-2004                   Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sweden to the United Nations 2004-                           

                                     Distinguished Visiting Professor, Adelphi University, New York

 

  Other Engagements and Commissions of Trust

1971-1973                   Editor of “Tiden”, the theoretical review of the Social Democratic Party

1973-1979                   Member of the Local School Authority in Lidingö

1979-1982                   Member of the Lidingö Cultural Board

1987-1989                   Member of the International Commission for Central American Recovery and Development (The Sanford Commission)

1989-1996                   Chairperson of the National Judo Federation, Black belt, 1st Dan, 1990

1996-                           Chairperson of the Olof Palme Memorial Fund

2000 and 2002                                                Head of the European Union Election Observation Mission in Zimbabwe

1999-2002                   Chairperson of the Swedish Institute in Alexandria, Egypt

2001- 2004                  Chair, United Nations Committee for Parliamentarians for

                         Global Action

2000-2004                                                        Member of the Board of the International Peace Academy, New York

 

Books and Publications

Latin Americans on Latin America, Stockholm, 1968

I orkanens öga (Central America -In the eye of the Hurricane), Stockholm 1981

El desafío europeo en Centroamérica, San José, Costa Rica, 1982

Dokument inifrån (Between Blocks and Bridges: Swedish Foreign Policy from Olof Palme to Post-Communism), Stockholm, 1992

Entre Escila y Caribdis: Olof Palme, la Guerra Fría y el Poscomunismo, Mexico, 1994

Mellan Maastricht och Sarajevo, (Europe between Maastricht and Sarajevo) Stockholm, 1994

The Impossible Neutrality. Southern Africa, Cape Town, 1994

Olof Palme – Reformisten utan gränser  (Reformer without Borders), 1996

Olof Palme - Reformista sin Fronteras, Barcelona 1997

Can the United Nations manage the new era? Stockholm, 1999

From Marshall to Post-Communism: A New Deal for Internationalism

First lecture of the Marshall Plan 50th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture Series at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., December 10, 1996

American Hegemony in the International Perspective. Lecture at the Summer Faculty Institute on World Security Affairs, Amherst College, June 11, 2002

Global challenges in the 21st century. Lecture at Adelphi University, Garden City, October 2002

The United Nations, Global Governance, and Global Citizenship after September 11

 Lecture at Adelphi University, Garden City, September 22, 2004

 

Languages

Swedish, English, French, Spanish and some German.