Pragmatism and Politics

The year 1976 marked a major juncture in FAO’s history with the election of a new director-general, Edouard Saouma, a Maronite Christian from the Lebanon with a distinctly different personality, and sharply different views, from his predecessor. An agricultural engineer, who had been director-general of Lebanon’s National Agricultural Research Institute and Minister of Agriculture, Saouma joined FAO in 1962, fourteen years before becoming executive head of the organization, first as regional representative for Southwest Asia in New Delhi, India (1962–65), and then for ten years as director of FAO’s Land and Water Development Division in Rome (1965–75). He was to be elected three consecutive times (in 1975, 1981 and 1987) and to serve for eighteen years as FAO’s director-general. Saouma immediately displayed a very different personality and character from that of his amiable and co-operative predecessor (Murray, 1989). His style of leadership was ‘perceived by many as self-perpetuating by whatever means, preoccupied with personal prestige, and egocentric toward authority’ (Abbott, 1992, p. ix). He established an unrivalled position, creating enemies in donor countries and support in the developing world, that ensured his election as director-general on three occasions (Pilon, 1988).