As
Barkat's Pick as UN Ombudsman Is Protested, A Letter Is Lost, A C.V. Is
Padded, Union Says
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, March 19 -- A new UN
Ombudsman was announced late last week, Johnston Barkat, selected
through a process which had already been protested to the Secretariat by
the union of UN Staff, who the Ombudsman is supposed to serve. On
Wednesday Inner City Press asked UN Spokesperson Michele Montas about
claims that Mr. Barkat embellished his resume, and out the objections to
the selection process having excluded the view of UN staff in New York.
Ms. Montas said she would look into it. Hours later, one of her staffers
e-mailed Inner City Press, "you asked if the SG received a letter from
the staff union on the Johnston Barkat appointment. The answer is no."
Not only does Inner
City Press have a copy of the letter protesting the appointment process
-- the letter has been and is on the Staff Union's web site, click
here
to view. The letter states it is "a formal objection to the selection
process," and
states
the reasons for the protest. So did the Secretary-General and even his
spokesperson's office not read the letter?
Perhaps the trick is that the
Staff Union letter was addressed to the Deputy Secretary-General,
allowing the Spokesperson's Office to say that the Secretary-General has
not received any protest. But he put the DSG in charge of the issue, and
of a task force that, it is reported, is to testify to the Fifth
Committee of the General Assembly. Just as the UN now seems to have
problems transmitting letter from UNDP in Myanmar to UN Headquarters in
New York, is there now some problem in a building moving from the DSG to
the SG?
DSG Migiro and SG Ban, do
letters pass from one to the other?
The Staff Union's beef for
Barkat's resume is that while they say he claimed to have been ombudsman
for 2000 staffers at Pace University in New York, that school only has
some 300 staffers. All of the rest are part-time or adjuncts, so they
say the use of the number is misleading. While the Spokesperson on
Wednesday said she didn't know what will happen next, the first step, it
seems clear, must be to admit that the protest has been received. Watch
this site.
Footnote:
Beyond the online protest letter, the Under Secretary General for
Management has had meetings on precisely this topic, opposition to the
process which selected Mr. Barkat. Is what's said to -- and by -- this
USG not attributable to the S-G? Further on the rumor that she will be
leaving New York, it's pointed out that the appointment of Susana
Malcorra of Argentina as USG for the Department of Field Support makes
the decamping all the more likely. In this scenario, the replacement
rather than Jane Holl Lute is said to be a German -- some say, groaning,
from UNMIK in Pristina; other says from Vienna, though that may be OHRM.
Ah, bureaucracy. But who on the 38th floor is paying attention, or even
reading and passing on their mail? Developing.
* * *
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Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army.
Click
here
for an earlier
Reuters AlertNet
piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's
$200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.
Video
Analysis here
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