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At
UN, "Wasteful" SG Guterres Moves
Protocol Underground to Tear Out
New Cubicles for
$500,000
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS,
December 16 – How wasteful is
the UN under Antonio Guterres?
How insubstantial are the
ostensible reforms? Today
Inner City Press exclusively
reports on a senseless waste
that even diplomats are
complaining about. The UN's
Protocol office, until now on
the UN's second floor across
from the Security Council, is
being move down to the third
sub-basement for at least
three months so that its space
can be modified for "hot
desking" or flex-space, at a
cost of $500,000. What a
waste, staff tell Inner City
Press, pointing out this
happened just after the UN of
Ban Ki-moon spent billions on
the UN Capital Master Plan
renovation. Why will we have
to go into the bowels of the
UN, a diplomat asked Inner
City Press. Both
constituencies negatively
reviewed Antonio Guterres, his
Deputy and, for some closely
in the loop, the head of the
Department of General Assembly
and Conference Management. But
a fish rots from the head.
Antonio Guterres is
responsible. He has refused to
take questions, for a month
now, as his Protocol Office
has been moved underground, in
UN moving boxes of the kind
Inner City Press' files were
loaded into and dumped on
First Avenue, when the UN
evicted Inner City Press for
reporting on corruption in the
UN Press Briefing Room. Inner
City Press remains restricted
to minders 22 months later.
Guterres and his head of DPI
Alison Smale like / engage in
censorship. We'll have more on
this. Among the parts of the
UN facing budget cuts for
waste is not only the
Department of Public
Information, increasingly a
propaganda arm which, as if as
a sidelight, engages in
censorship of the
investigative Press, but also
the UN's Regional Commissions,
Budget Committee officials
told Inner City Press on
December 13. Inner City Press
has previously reported on and
asked about the presence of
the Latin American Regional
Commission (ECLAC) chief
Alicia Barcena with Antonio
Guterres when he spoke before
the Committee. The UN then
told Inner City Press Barcena
was called on by Guterres for
her expertise, but remains
head of ECLAC. We'll have more
on this. The Budget Committee
officials told Inner City
Press that if the Advisory
Committee on Administrative
and Budgetary Questions does
not finish "five big reports"
by the end of this week,
concluding the session on
December 22 may be unlikely.
At the noon briefing on
December 14, Inner City Press
asked the spokesman for the
President of the General
Assembly for the status of the
ACABQ reports, and about the
budget process. The question
has been answered in writing:
"The President of the General
Assembly is aware of and
concerned by the late arrival
of documents to the Fifth
Committee for its
consideration. This has been a
persistent problem, hampering
the work of the Committee. The
President has discussed this
issue with the Chairs of the
Advisory Committee on
Administrative and Budgetary
Questions (ACABQ) and the
Fifth Committee. He has also
been kept abreast of the state
of play in the Fifth
Committee, including through
periodic contact with the
Fifth Committee’s Chair. ACABQ
is a subsidiary organ of the
General Assembly and is
represented in the Fifth
Committee by its Chair." We'll
have more on this. At the noon
briefing on December 13, Inner
City Press asked UN Spokesman
Farhan Haq, UN transcript
here: Inner City Press: I'm
sure you're aware that, in the
Budget Committee, proposals
have been made for more
substantial cuts than… than
the Secretary-General has
proposed. He's proposed
200 million. There's a
proposal for 2… an additional
$250 million in cuts.
And I wanted to ask you about…
part of it, I've heard from a
Budget Committee official, is
the regional commissions to
face… as well as special
political commissions, DPI
[Department of Public
Information]. And I
wanted to know, number one,
are there contingency plans to
implement it? Do you
have any response to this
desire for cuts? And Ms.
[Alicia] Bárcena, who I know
is the head of a regional
commission, is this… I'd asked
Stéphane [Dujarric], I think,
what… she was, you know,
sitting behind the
Secretary-General in the
presentation to the Budget
Committee. Is this her
role? What's the… what
is the response to the… the
desire to cut these regional
commissions? Can you
justify their current
budget?Deputy Spokesman:
Regarding this, this is a
matter that's up for
discussions among the Member
States, and we'll let the
Member States discuss amongst
themselves how to proceed
forward with a budget.
And so, the matter is in their
hands, and we're not going to
comment while they're dealing
with it." New DPI chief Alison
Smale's swearing in ceremony
was closed to the Press; she
has still not even responded
to Inner City Press' three
petitions for review of its
eviction and restriction for
reporting on corruption at the
UN. Meanwhile, the UN Budget
Committee head for the year,
the Cameroonian Ambassador who
joined DPI in its censorship
after Inner City Press asked
about abuses by his president
Paul Biya, told Inner City
Press it will all be done by
December 22. We'll see. The UN
delivered a threat
to Inner City Press to
“review” it accreditation on
October 20 at 5 pm. The UN
official who signed the letter,
when Inner City Press went to
ask about the undefined
violation of live-streaming
Periscope video at a photo op
by UN Secretary General
Antonio Guterres, had already
left, minutes after sending
the threat. This comes two
days after Inner City Press asked Guterres about the
UN inaction on threatened
genocide in Cameroon, and the
UN claimed
Guterres hadn't heard the
15-second long question.
It also
comes after Alison Smale the
head of the Department of
Public Information which would
“review” Inner City Press'
accreditation has ignored threeseparatepetitions
from Inner City Press in the
six weeks she has been in the
job, urging her to remove
restrictions on Inner City
Press' reporting which hinder
its coverage of the UN's
performance in such crises as
Yemen,
Kenya,
Myanmar,
and the Central African
Republic where Guterres
travels next week, with
Smale's DPI saying its
coverage of the trip will be a
test of its public relations
ability. But the UN official
who triggered the complaint is
Maher Nasser, who filled in
for Smale before she arrived.
His complaint is that audio of
what he said to Inner City
Press as it staked out the
elevators in the UN lobby
openly recording, as it has
for example
with Cameroon's Ambassador
Tommo Monthe, here,
was similarly published.
A UN “Public Information”
official is complaining about
an article, and abusing his
position to threaten to review
Inner City Press'
accreditation. The UN has
previously been called
out for targeting Inner
City Press, and for having no
rules or due process.
But the UN is entirely
UNaccountable, impunity on
censorship as, bigger picture,
on the cholera it brought to
Haiti. And, it seems, Antonio
Guterres has not reformed or
reversed anything. This threat
is from an official involved
in the last round of
retaliation who told Inner
City Press on Twitter to be
less "negative" about the UN -
amid inaction on the mass
killing in Cameroon - and who
allowed pro-UN hecking of
Inner City Press' questions
about the cholera the UN
brought to Haiti and the Ng
Lap Seng /John Ashe UN bribery
scandal which resulted in six
guilty verdicts. We'll have
more on this.
***
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