After "My Year
With Helen" Scorned Guterres,
POLITICO Contrasts Him To Trump,
Failures Ignored
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
January 22 – At the UN, is
one-year Secretary General
Antonio Guterres a glass half-full
or entirely
empty? While a recent
independent film "My Year With
Helen" depicts Guterres' election
as a let down, and people from
Southern Cameroons, Yemen and
elsewhere would have to
concur, now Politico Magazine
has come in with a positive portrayal,
contrasting Guterres to Trump:
"The U.N.'s Most Important
Peacekeeping Mission: Trump."
Has Trump filled Guterres'
glass, or given him an excuse?
Turmp didn't make Guterres
take the golden statue of
Cameroon's 37-year dictator
Paul Biya, and remain silent
as opposition politicians were
detained. Trump didn't make
Guterres ignore for now the corruption
exposed by the November 20,
2017 indictment of Cheikh Gadio
and Patrick Ho of the China
Energy Fund Committee for bribing
UN President of the General Assembly
Sam Kutesa. None of these are
found in the Politico piece, from
a field-focused columnist who
often nails it, for example as
to UN enovy Staffan de
Mistura. Maybe Guterres looks
better from far away.
Throughout 2016 New Zealand
documentary maker Gaylene
Preston and her crew staked
out the UN Security Council
along with Inner City Press,
awaiting the results of the
straw polls to elected Ban
Ki-moon's sucessor as UN
Secretary General. Preston's
focus was Helen Clark, the
former New Zealand prime
minister then in her second
term as Administrator of the
UN Development Program.
Preston would ask Inner City
Press after each poll, What
about Helen Clark's chances?
Suffice it to say Clark never
caught fire as a candidate.
Inner City Press told Preston,
as did many other interviewees
in her documentary “My Year
with Helen,” that it might be
sexism. But it might be power
too - including Samantha
Power, the US Ambassador who
spoke publicly about gender
equality and then in secret
cast a ballot Discouraging
Helen Clark, and praised
Antonio Guterres for his
energy (yet to be seen).
Samantha Power's hypocrisy is
called out in Preston's film,
in which New Zealand's
Ambassador complains that
fully four members of the
Council claimed to be the
single “No Opinion” vote that
Clark received. There was a
private screening of My Year
With Helen on December 4 at
NYU's King Juan Carlos Center,
attended by a range of UN
staff, a New Zealand designer
of a website for the country's
proposal new flag, and Ban
Ki-moon's archivist, among
others. After the screening
there was a short Q&A
session. Inner City Press used
that to point out that
Guterres has yet to criticize
any of the Permanent Five
members of the Council who did
not block him as the US,
France and China blocked
Clark, with Russia casting a
“No Opinion.” And that
Guterres picked a male from
among France's three
candidates to head UN
Peacekeeping which they own,
and accepted males from the UK
and Russia for “their” top
positions. Then over New
Zealand wine the talk turned
to the new corruption at the
UN, which is extensive, and
the upcoming dubious Wall
Street fundraiser of the UN
Correspondents Association,
for which some in attendance
had been shaken down, as one
put it, for $1200. The
UN needed and needs to be
shaken up, and hasn't been.
But the film is good, and
should be screened not in the
UN Censorship Alliance but
directly in the UN Security
Council, on the roll-down
movie screen on which failed
envoys like Ismail Ould Cheikh
Ahmed are projected. “My Year
With Helen” is well worth
seeing.
***
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