| UNESCO Governance Crisis
Deepens Amidst Concealed Coronavirus Spread
Like Guterres
By Matthew
Russell Lee & UNESCO
sources
UN GATE, Nov 1 – As reported by
Inner City Press on 28 May
last, here, due to total
incompetence and the unruly
interference by the
Secretariat of DG Azoulay in
the governance processes,
Member states of UNESCO are
even more divided than before
over the governance issues at
stake.
After the noisy slap given to
both this week by member
states, the ears of DG Azoulay
and of her new friend Agapito
Mba Mokuy, Chair of the
Executive Board, will keep
buzzing for some time.
The
UN Agency in Paris is plunged
in another governance
insanity. The attempt
instigated by the French DG
Audrey Azoulay to push for a
virtual meeting of the
Executive board with a
considerably reduced agenda,
did not work despite the full
support by Mba Mokuy.
Putting at risk
his vanishing reputation and
credibility, the support of
Mba Mokuy for Azoulay is not a
surprise after cheaply selling
himself to the French last
June by accepting all
conditions including the
imposed on him Secretary of
the Board, the Indian Sachin
Bhatt. Despite the
technical and political
mistakes made as Secretary of
the Governing bodies, Sachin
Bhatt is still kept as
Director GBS. For how long
will this aberration last is
an open question. As pointed
out by a staff member working
in central services, Remaining
true to his sleazy reputation,
Bhatt kept eavesdropping on
the Chair and sabotaging his
work as instructed by the
Cabinet and by his exclusive
dog-handler Kacyanides”.
This week,
subsequent to his efforts to
impose a virtual meeting of
the governing body and then
consulting the members of the
board about it, Mba Mokuy got
a clear negative answer. Here
follows his email to the Board
members announcing the results
of the vote:
“Dear
colleagues, Results of
the vote further to the
consultation as per Rules 60
and 51 of the Rules of
Procedure of the Executive
Board. The question:
Considering the measures
announced on 28 October 2020
by the host country, should
the 210th session of the
Executive Board take place
virtually (from 4 to 18
November 2020)? Summary of the
results: Members of the
Executive Board 58; Member
States that VOTED YES – 21;
VOTED NO – 33; ABSTAINED -1
and 3 DID NOT VOTE.
Conclusion: The result of the
consultation by correspondence
is that the Executive Board
should not meet virtually from
4 to 18 November 2020.
Therefore, the 210th session
is postponed to a later date.
signed: Agapito Mba Mokuy,
Chairperson of the Executive
Board”
Despite
this huge political failure
for which he is only one
liable and accountable, in his
email, and in order to
preserve DG Azoulay’s plans
and reputation as much as
possible, Mba Mokuy did not
include a single hint of
an answer to the
questions raised by member
states about the agenda of the
Board and about the modalities
of its holding, summarized as
follows:
1. Will the
current provisional agenda for
the 210th session of the
Executive Board be maintained
or will it be changed in case
of a virtual meeting? If a
change is foreseen, when will
the new provisional agenda be
distributed to the Member
States? 2. The current
provisional agenda contains
items which require a private
meeting. Which procedure is
foreseen for them in case of a
virtual meeting? 3. With
regard to possible technical
developments after the
approval of the document on
the working methods for
virtual sessions, what will be
the procedure for votes, if
they should be necessary, in
case of a virtual
meeting?
An EU
ambassador put it plain and
simple to Inner City Press:
The Africa group made a
mammoth mistake in proposing
last year Agapito Mba Mokuy to
chair the Board. It was
unquestionably their turn, but
they could have found a better
candidate. He is simply not up
to this highly demanding
political position. The most
he could get in GBS (Governing
Bodies Secretariat) is a post
of a clerk, but even then he
may again
underperform.
Another
African disappointment for the
majority of member states is
the ambassador of Ethiopia
Henok Teferra Shawl. In his
position of vice-chair of the
executive board, he was
expected to be impartial in
the heated political debate on
a dividing topic concerning
the future of the
international Bureau of
education. Still, under
instructions from China, Henok
Teferra Shawl took the
chairmanship of the working
group established to examine
the proposal of China on the
skyjacking of education
curricula worldwide (see
report here)
and achieved nothing but
further splitting member
states in a political
confrontation that could have
been avoided by a diplomat
with better negotiation
skills.
There is
also another serious setback
for the Africa group in the
Secretariat of UNESCO that
Inner City Press already
pointed out on several
occasion. After climbing the
reputation of the most corrupt
Assistant DG in the Agency,
the “yes-man” of the French
regime Firmin Matoko, who was
supposed to retire and leave
the Paris based Agency in few
months, got an extension of
his contract by DG Azoulay
against the regulations so
that he can “keep
demonstrating his high
standards of brain-sterility
and docile incompetence” for
few more months.
At the last
session of the Board, the
Assistant DG for Africa,
Matoko from Congo, himself
rewrote a Draft decision
prepared and submitted by the
African states on the
“Priority Africa” item
submitted for the approval by
the executive board.
By doing so, DG
Azoulay was expecting the
decision to be modified in
favor of the French national
narrow priorities - that is,
FrancAfrique.
Even for
those ambassadors who usually
keep their eyes wide shot in
front of the political mess
and diplomatic malpractices of
Azoulay’s administration, this
was too much. Confident in his
total impunity, Firmin Matoko
did not bother even to
consider necessary to erase
his name as author of the
document submitted to the
Africa group, on his behalf,
by Ethiopia, Senegal and
Gabon.
Furthermore, ADG
Matoko and DG Azoulay did not
even bother to inform member
states about the several COVID
cases that were notified from
a number of permanent
delegations accredited to
UNESCO.
On
October
19 Guterres
bragged that
he will travel
in two weeks
to Massachusetts
to meet his
semi-estranged
wife who lives
in Portugal, a
country from which
quarantine would be
required
in New York. This
is open
evasion of
quarantine
rules - or not
open, since it
was said in a
meeting
several disgusted participants
invited
Inner City
Press to
observe.
Perhaps most
significantly,
Guterres in the
meeting expressed
open preference in
the current US
president election
saying that if
one side wins,
"Net Zero
Emissions" can
be advance,
and if the
other (Trump)
wins, Guterres
and the UN
will rely on
bankers like
JPMorgan
Chase.
Guterres
also
spoke about
social media
platforms -
not the
censorship of
investigative
articles but the
need to
censors more,
citing
what he called
"Social Dilemma"
a show he says
he is watching
on Netflix. We
will have more
on this.
YouTube
- song
Self-evidently,
since her election, DG Azoulay
often proved useless. Now
immorality is added to the
uselessness with staff and
ambassadors misinformed about
COVID propagation in the
Agency prior to the
nation-wide lockdown.
Clearly, DG
Azoulay is not an asset to
this Agency”, added the EU
ambassador usually sympathetic
to the French regime. “They
are losing it
all”.
This is where
UNESCO stands today, a
Zombie-land propitious to the
flourishing of corruption,
embezzlement, abuse of power
and nepotism. This is
Antonio Guterres' UN - corrupt
colonialism. We will have more
on that. Watch this
site.
***
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