By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, February 21 -- As complaints grow about the slow pace and lack of transparency of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's second term "shake up," Inner City Press has learned of names in play for yet another position: the long vacant Special Adviser on Africa post, held on part time for years despite General Assembly admonitions.
Now under consideration are Adama Dieng, the Senegalese Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda -- and Egypt's current (and Mubarak era) Permanent Representative, Maged Abdelaziz.
The latter has a difficulty of not being from sub Saharan Africa. He has long sought a UN post; one insider told Inner City Press, "Let him replace Shaban Shaban," a fellow Egyptian leaving DGACM after Rio + 20 this summer.
Not only Senegal, but also the Obama administration are said to have weighed in for Adama Dieng.
Meanwhile skeptics saying that while the Deputy Secretary General post was once "Susana Malcorra's to lose," now Ban is seeking "another Latin, but lower energy, less of a challenge." Interviews for various high posts have been postponed, either because Under Secretaries General being told to leave want, in fact, to stay, or due to push back from powerful member states to get on the short lists.
Ban Ki-moon typically is heading out of town, to London then Zambia and Angola, His first hiring priority must be an envoy to Syria. But after that? Watch this site.
