By Matthew Russell Lee, Follow up on Exclusive
UNITED NATIONS, August 2 -- With a cloud thrown over the UN General Assembly vote on Saudi Arabia's Syria resolution by a notice linking to a version of the resolution Saudi Arabia told member states had been superseded, Inner City Press asked four UN spokespeople who was responsible. Two and a half hours before the scheduled vote, there was still no answer. Now it is time.
Back on July 13, 2012, the UN announced that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had named "Jean-Jacques Graisse of Belgium as Acting Head, Department of General Assembly and Conference Management." His UN "Biographical Note" states that "Mr. Graisse’s most recent position was as Senior Deputy Executive Director responsible for the World Food Program’s (WFP) multibillion-dollar emergency, development and logistics operations around the world."
Unstated but significant is that after Graisse took over in January 2004 as "Senior Deputy Executive Director (Operations Department)," in July 2004 he brought into WFP as Deputy Executive Director (Administration) Susana Malcorra. Malcorra is now Ban Ki-moon's chief of staff, still very much involved in the Department of Field Support she used to run, and now, staff have exclusively told Inner City Press, "involved" in DGACM.
They point also to moves with the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Matters, which we will address in coming days. But it raises the question: why did Ban (and Malcorra) name only an "Acting" head of DGACM, the Secretariat's largest Department, and why THIS particular acting chief? Other sources say that Ban wanted to keep on in the post the Egyptian Muhammad Shaaban Shaaban, despite a troubling UN court system finding against his management practices. "Reformers" wanted Shaaban out; the compromise was to appoint only an "acting" head and apparently Malcorra got to choose, they say. Was there recusal? Others point out that the appointment of an outside "acting" head of DGACM is strange, since in the normal course Assistant Secretary General Franz Baumann would have been named Officer in Charge.
But Baumann's management moves have left a trail of staff complaints. And so an acting head, and this one. And now, this GA problem.
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