Diego Zuna
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|---|---|
| Rank | 32nd senior deputy prime minister of Pacitalia |
| Term of office | 23rd October 2006 — |
| Predecessor | Domenico Benficalzo |
| Successor | Incumbent |
| Birthdate | 9th July, 1954 |
| Place of Birth: | Coronà del Santarém, Margheria, Pacitalia |
| Spouse | Minah Kamadehani Rafsa |
| Children | Ahmad, 15 Safa, 13 |
| Profession | Politician, humanitarian |
| Political party | Pacitalian Social Coalition |
| Languages spoken | Pacitalian, English, Spanish, Farsi, Arabic |
| Degrees |
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 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, 1996
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The Right Honourable Signore Diego Sandro Cristobál Guillermo Zuna de Coronà, MA, BA, ACP, NL, born 9th July, 1954 in Coronà del Santarém, Margheria, Pacitalia, is the senior deputy prime minister of the Democratic Capitalist Republic of Pacitalia and a prominent humanitarian activist. He is the thirty-second person to hold the position of senior deputy prime minister, succeeding the late Domenico Benficalzo, when he was named to the cabinet of prime minister Fernando Chiovitti on 23rd October, 2006.
Zuna describes his politics as "somewhat mainstream". He is an economic liberal mainly for his beliefs in low taxation and minimal government intervention in the economy. Socially, he is a libertarian and social democrat in that he believes in slight increases in the level of welfare provision in the state. However, he generally prefers the form of social safety net currently used in Pacitalia but advocates reform of the system.
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Early life and education
Born to an upper-class family with notable aristocratic lineage, Zuna attended the Collegiata-Accademiata Terra Graza, an Antigonian all-boys preparatory school located in that province's northern anchor city, Sinfantonera. He graduated from there in 1972 with a secondary-level pre-imperatus specialitat diploma in liberal arts study, and moved on to the prestigious Instituto degli Sienciata Politicata alla Capitale, or Poca. There he spent four years and earned his bachelor's of the arts in political science magna cum laude, with an imperatus specialitat in international diplomacy and humanitarian sciences. Zuna's minor was Mideastern languages, a major contributor to his eventual fluency in Farsi and Arabic.
After leaving Poca in 1976 with his first degree, Zuna was pressured into upgrading it to a Master's by his father, and so, he enrolled in the respected University of Central Antigonia for the fall semester. His time at UCA was marked with his involvement in numerous student protests decrying human rights abuses in Africa and the Mideast, something that would be a foreshadowing of his future career. Zuna earned his Masters' of the Arts in political science, again with magna cum laude honours, in April 1978, and headed to the Universitado Técnico, Artes Liberales y Policiencias (Unital-Po) in Margheria to receive an associate of the arts career certification in human welfare and humanitarian sciences. He aced the two-year program, earning the certification with highest honours from the polytechnical college.
Adult life and career
Zuna started work as an intern for Amnesty International. He was moved into a clerical position in the Nortopalazzo offices, but it was soon discovered his talents were worthy of a much higher level of work. He accepted an offer to move to the Persepolis offices of AI, where he was given a senior role in the new action committee on Mideast human rights. He led the ACMHR to great successes and along the way developed a close working relationship with Parthia's Shah Khosru III, as they both turned their attention to mediating increasing strife on the African continent.
Zuna met his wife, Minah Kamadehani Rafsa, while travelling through Esfahan in 1982. They married the next year and settled in Persepolis.
In recognition of his work in the Mideast, Amnesty International promoted him to their executive board in 1986. His new position allowed him to be much more vocal, and he took full advantage, publicly decrying the UN's practices in Africa and the Mideast. Zuna spent much of his time between 1986 and 1990 moving around Africa documenting human rights progress (and, conversely, abuses) before moving his wife from Persepolis to Kinshasa in 1990 for a two-year stint there. There, they had their first son, Ahmad, born in 1991. Amnesty International promoted Zuna to Head of African Operations, on top of still being an AI executive, in 1992. The Zuna family left Kinshasa for Cairo that same year, but he would hold those two lofty positions until 1997.
Great Central African War
Zuna arrived at his highest level of prominence yet for his work in the Great Central African War. The war erupted in 1996, at the height of Zuna's tenure as head of African operations. On word of the conflict's inception, Zuna raced south to Kampala, the capital of Uganda, where he began coordinating, with the UN, relief efforts and the movement of refugees to temporary havens outside the war zone. Under his watch, the UN and Amnesty International cooperated to air-drop nearly Ð30bn of food, medical supplies and clothing at various safe-points in Zaire, the country experiencing a wide majority of the conflict. In August 1996, when the conflict appeared to be cooling slightly, and Zairian president Mobutu Sese Seko had sent his foreign minister abroad appealing for further aid, Zuna personally visited, with an Amnesty International entourage, numerous Zairian villages, handing out potable water, boxes of non-perishable food and clothing and shoes for the needy residents. His visit was remarkable in that he did not have a military escort, whether from the UN, the Mobutu government or the rebellious AFDL. From this, Zuna's face was nearly simultaneously paired as the metaphoric representation of aid from the outside world.
Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize soon after, Zuna played down the recognition, saying he was "just doing what any human being should be obligated to do", and was "intrigued" to discover that another Pacitalian, journalist and filmmaker Anastasio Coscarelli, had also been nominated for 1996's peace prize. Coscarelli's PBC documentary Holocaust by Hunger: The Zaire War and its Effect on the Rural Poor was arguably viewed at an equal level to Zuna's work, for it was recognised for just as effectively opening up the world's eyes to the atrocities taking place during the war as Zuna's efforts had done.
Zuna won the Nobel Peace Prize over Coscarelli, and accepted citing his "regret that [he] could not share it with Coscarelli". Zuna said of Coscarelli: "He is a true man, and I admire him and his efforts greatly. If you say I deserve this award, then he deserves this too."
Return to Pacitalia
Zuna returned to his home country in the spring of 1997, stepping down as head of African operations for Amnesty International but remaining on its executive board. He had left, in 1981, a Pacitalia under the watch of an Athena Papistikas PSC (then known as Liberal) government, but returned to find Pacitalian voters clearly returned to their natural right-of-centre beliefs, having elected Timothy Ell's Federation of Progressive Democrats (then called the Capitalist Party) the previous year. Zuna appeared in various media outlets upon his return (again, thanks to his work during the war), but now, he had turned his attention to domestic issues, and came out critical of the "threadbare" operations of Pacitalia's social safety net.
He said he admired Ell's work in continuing former prime minister Francesco Santo Ragazzo's aid provisions to Zaire but that he had "thusly neglected to reform the social safety net to serve all Pacitalians". Zuna was concerned that while the SSN still prevented non-categorical welfare applicants (those simply unwilling to work despite not having a disability or on-the-job injury) from freeloading receipts off the system, it, through a series of loopholes, somehow prevented justified applicants from receiving cheques. Ell promised reform when questioned by the media, saying Zuna was "right", and a modified SSN system that prevented categorical applicants from experiencing any denial of financial aid was launched on 1st January, 1998.
Zuna joined the PSC in 1999 in anticipation of a run at his home seat of Coronà del Santarém in the next elections. Winning his seat in that vote, held in 2000, he joined continuous leadership hopeful Fernando Chiovitti in an attempt to push the party so that it would be a more desirable alternative to Pacitalian voters seeking change (if such a scenario ever came to fruition). They co-operated with two other prominent PSC members, Fiadono Nemassore and Stefanos Megarsis, in authoring Centrism and Social Balance: The PSC of the Twenty-First Century, released at the annual party convention in Amita in 2002. By the time it had become a critically acclaimed work, Chiovitti had defeated former prime minister Papistikas in the 2004 leadership vote and the four were well on their way to beginning what they called the "Ideological Shift Initiative".
Recent political career
Zuna became a close advisor to Chiovitti from April 2004 on, as the Chiovitti-Zuna-Megarsis-Nemassore ideology initiative began to gather steam within the party. Zuna went against his grain and reputation as an outspoken critic of traditional conservative thought, and as a critic of FPD governments' policies, by preferring to work behind the scenes on the reformation of the PSC into a centrist, social-liberal party rather than a true socialist party. Upon the PSC's return to the status of opposition to the government in the January 2006 elections, he was appointed Opposition Critic for Labour and Welfare and served in that capacity until Chiovitti engineered the absolute resignation of both houses of the legislature on 18th July, 2006, in protest to Constantino Sorantanali's continued leadership of the country.
Zuna was then subsequently re-elected to his seat in Margheria in the October 2006 election and was announced as the next senior deputy prime minister of Pacitalia upon the swearing-in of Fernando Chiovitti on 23rd October, 2006.
Personal life
Zuna is an avid fencer and swordsman. A little known fact about him is that he almost entered the Olympics in 1992 to compete in fencing for Pacitalia but backed out at the last minute upon learning of his promotion to Head of African Operations for Amnesty International. As mentioned, Zuna has been married to Minah Kamadehani Rafsa since 1983. They have a son, Ahmad, born in 1991, and a daughter, Safa, who was born in 1993. Zuna is a convert from Catholicism to Zoroastrianism but his last name, Zuna, is not a Parthian name (there was previously confusion over whether or not the name was Pacitalian, as his family is the only one in the country to have that last name). He and his wife also keep two dogs and regularly return to Esfahan to visit her family.
