By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/un4acabq093009.html
UNITED NATIONS, September 30 -- In a switch that may more accurately reflect the UN than the speeches given here in the past week, political pressure has resulted in steering a top UN budget advisory job away from a Thai citizen who came in first place in the interviews.
The executive secretary position in the UN's Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions or ACABQ has been open since it was vacate by Mark Gilpin. Of the applicants, the first place finisher was Dennis Thatchaichawalit of Thailand, currently serving as a Chief of Service at the D-1 level in the UN's Program Planning and Budget Division.
But well placed sources tell Inner City Press that the Under Secretary General of the ACABQ, Susan McLurg of the United States, intervened to move up the third place finisher, Shari Klugman, currently a D-1 in the Ted Turner financed UN Fund for International Partnerships.
The Secretary General's office on the 38th floor, sources say, gave its blessing to this legerdemain. Members of the ACABQ, many of whom know the UN well from previous service for their countries on the Fifth (Budget) Committee, are grumbling about what they call corruption. A senior UN official who Inner City Press asked about switch shrugged and said, "That's how the UN works."
Inner City Press telephoned Ms. Klugman on September 30 and she genially confirmed that she begins as executive secretary of ACABQ on October 1. Inner City Press then asked UN Spokesperson Michele Montas about the hiring. Ms. Montas did not answer, saying it is a "General Assembly matter." But sources say that the Secretariat had not only the normal, but an abnormal, role in the selection of Ms. Klugman, and bypassing of Mr. Thatchaichawalit, who had been rated higher. If the Secretariat provides any further information, it will be published on this site.
See Inner City Press' previous ACABQ stories: 1st 2nd 3rd
The ACABQ is one of the few bodies which can oversee the UN that is quasi independent. When even the ACABQ staffing is politicized, in a fashion some participants in the selection process call open, there is no oversight at all.
Inner City Press previously interviewed and profiled Ms. McLurg's predecessor Rajat Saha, on his views of the need for reform of the ACABQ. After the interview and Saha's return to India, Inner City Press learned that before he left, he got his daughter a UN staff job.
The ACABQ reviews and opines on UN Secretariat budget proposals, among other things. If its officials can be influenced or appear to be influences by job offers to themselves or family members, the oversight function is undermined. So too if there are irregularities in the application, interview and rating processes to fill the top staff job.
Footnotes: Inner City Press has had simple request to confirm or deny UN hiring pending with UN spokespeople for weeks now. Longer time UN hands note that Saha's predecessor Vladimir Kuznetsov ended up in jail for impropriety, since sent back to Russia. And beyond ACABQ, the General Assembly's Fifth (Budget) Committee is also a launching pad for jobs with the Secretariat.
Recently, Egypt's representative on the Fifth Committee Hesham Mohamed Eman Afifi was awarded a P-4 post in UN peacekeeping's Department of Field Support. DFS chief Susana Malcorra, who Inner City Press was able to directly ask about the hiring, said it was through the normal process. But should the revolving door between the budget committee, and the agencies whose budgets it votes on, be closed or slowed down? Watch this site.
