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By Matthew Russell Lee & sources, Exclusive

UN GATE, June 11 – Evidently, 2021 is a year for elections at the UN. The Portuguese, Antonio Guterres was in a closed-door, one candidate process recommended on June 8 by the UN Security Council for a second term as Secretary-General and at UNESCO, the French Audrey Azoulay is running as well only against herself with reelection scheduled by the General Conference for next November.  The irony of history is that both Guterres and Azoulay, while representing the European Union with its supposed far-famed democratic foundations and principles are throwing away those principles by orchestrating the antidemocratic one-candidate reelection scheme. Guterres blocked at least seven opposition candidates.  

At UNESCO, last March brought to the fore one of the most unbelievable scandals ever experienced at the UN level with the intentional spoiling of the democratic electoral process for the Head of a UN agency. And again, it came from UNESCO in Paris, with the candidate from Kyrgyzstan as we reported was pushed out from competing. He was silenced exactly like those by Guterres, with the collusion of those who block the circulation of any opponents. By the deadline of 15 March 2021, the Chair of the Board, MBA MOKUY had received two nominations: the one from France - the current DG, A. Azoulay, and the one of Kyrgyzstan - A.B. Beishenaliev, Minister of Education and Science of the Kyrgyz Republic.   Inner City Press first reported how he was made to drop out. He contacted Inner City Press, and now this: "Almazbek Beishenaliev, said that he had voluntarily refused to run for UNESCO director: 'We have withdrawn the application. No emphasis was placed. I refused voluntarily, "said Beishenaliev. At the same time, he asked us not to publish this information.'" That says it all.  In a move of intellectual and institutional dishonesty, that will remain and mark this dark period for UNESCO, the Chairman of the Executive board MBA MOKUY kept this second candidacy secret from member states.  He shared it however with the French DG Azoulay and this gave him the upper hand for negotiating and subsequently drawing a personal gain.

Indeed, the Chairman is ending his mandate in few months, and in order to secure his bright future, he agreed to postpone the announcement of the candidacies under the condition that after her reelection, MBA MOKUY will get from Azoulay an ADG position at UNESCO.   Thus, instead of announcing the two candidacies on the next day after the deadline, 16 March, as all his predecessors had done in their times, he gave France the time it needed to put paramount pressure on the government of Kyrgyzstan to promptly withdraw its candidacy. The day that followed the withdrawal of the second candidate, March 23, 2021, the Chairman of the Executive Board sent his circular letter to inform Member States that there is only one candidate for DG of UNESCO. In paragraph two of his letter, he shamelessly lied by stating to the entire world that he had received only one candidature. Letter here.  This is more than criminal. It sheds doubts about the whole procedure. 

 An additional charge against MBA MOKUY resides in the following fact - it has happened in the past, in the rich history of the United Nations, that a candidate was presented and then withdrawn by its government. But in this case, in his letter of March 23, Agapito MBA MOKUY should have clearly indicated that by the deadline of March 15 there were actually two candidates and that subsequently the Kyrgyz government decided to withdraw its own.  

   However, instead of playing the transparency game, he opted for the worst of the diplomatic approaches thus spoiling the whole election procedure.

The explanations that MBA MOKUY will have to provide to his fellow ambassadors following the exposure by Inner City Press of this monumental scandal and the approach crafted together with the Director general to keep this affair totally secret, will do nothing but sink them both further.   The French succeeded to eliminate the other candidacy, but at the price of joining the dictators’ club now run by Guterres with their well-established tradition to get rid of any potential opposition. Bullying member states since the election of Azoulay in 2017 was a usual practice. With the above, that practice has been taken to a new, unreached before, political dimension.   

Fraud, abuse of power, promotion of the mistress of the Head of her Cabinet Kacyanides, the detailed list of wrongdoings largely justifies the sacking of both from the organization. Another scandal that went beyond the boldest imagination was related to the team of French secret service agents accessing the UNESCO building with the approval by the Cabinet of DG Azoulay.  And now that.  This unprecedented interference in the DG selection, that is in line with the North Korean ‘democratic’ practices, is still not raising concerns by the big European and Nordic democracies. The UN system has become corrupted.

At UNHQ seven additional candidates challenged his detrimental and insignificant leadership.  The individual candidates were not selected because they were not supported by one of the 193 member countries of the United Nations. Strangely so, since the texts of the UN Charter and of the procedure established through the adopted Resolution in 2015 do not prohibit such candidates to present themselves. The UN is not respecting its own decisions.  Member states all agree that the record of Guterres has been more than meagre over the past five years, with Syria, Yemen and Mali desperately lacking a political solution. A name has been found for Northern Macedonia and a peace process is slowly underway in Libya, but the UN's role was mainly limited to accompany these processes instead of leading or playing a significant role as per its mandate.  The results of his work are really insignificant, according to several diplomatic sources, some of whom recall the passivity of Guterres at the time of the 2017 genocide of the Rohingya in Burma. In May, Antonio Guterres stressed that key elements of his activities relied on discretion. Well, we may give him a credit on that one. He is the most discreet and unnoticeable UNSG ever.  The most virulent criticisms of the former UN High Commissioner for Refugees come from NGOs who accuse him of not doing enough on human rights. Guterres defends this, privately assuring that he does much more in private meetings with leaders than they could even imagine. And what is happening after speaking to the leaders? Nothing of course. Double zero. The usual Guterres score.  Estonia's Ambassador to the UN Sven Jrgenson, President of the Council for the month of June, told reporters : "Even though we had only one official candidate, the process of the selection has not changed since last time. Now we pass on the torch to the UN General Assembly," he said. Absolutely not true. Everything changed in the selection since last time with its multiple candidacies proposed and a real selection operated.  "Beauty is in the eyes of the looker, like they say," Jurgenson stated, adding that he is "particularly glad" that the same transparent and democratic process is still applied for the election this time like last time. "And even though there was only one candidate, but the candidate presented his vision statement. We had hearings also at the General Assembly and the Security Council. So, this procedure is democratic." To summarize his empty statement, if in Venezuela, Belarus or Syria there is only one official candidate running for the presidency, this is not a democratic procedure. If it is the same case at the UN, then the procedure is fully democratic. Make of it what you will.  Guterres’s second term became a fact to the great disappointment of numerous self-declared candidates who were hoping to be taken seriously and push the process to be even more transparent than it was in 2016, when a bold new experiment occurred. A handful of the candidates are still campaigning through informal means, and last week, a new person threw his hat in the ring, Patrick U. Petit, a 52-year-old German-French mediator. In a defensive move, Jurgenson of Estonia insisted that the selection process has been transparent: “I don’t think that we are moving back,” he said. “I think the process, if you look at what happened this year, actually, it was exactly the same process that happened last [time]. But it was just with one candidate.” What a joke. The UN system has become entirely corrupted.   Watch this site.

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