By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, January 29 -- The UN Staff Union on January 24 passed a resolution of "no confidence" Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Inner City Press exclusively covered the vote and meeting, in which Ban's response to Inner City Press at his press conference two days previous that those who oppose his proposals are "selfish."
On January 25, Inner City Press asked Ban's Associate Spokesman Farhan Haq for the Secretariat's response to the resolution, which criticizes Ban's spending on travel and UN Peacekeeping waste.
Haq replied that the Secretariat, and Ban, hadn't yet seen the resolution. Since then, Ban has been among other places in Davos, Switzerland.
Now five days later, the Staff Union leadership has released the resolution, here.
Some of the delay was occasioned by the Staff Union's leadership having proposed a weaker resolution. Here is the Staff Union president's gloss:
Dear all,
The resolution starts by saying " the staff..." at UNHQ, NY, etc...so it is quite clear who made the decision.
Even though I personally don't like the text and do not think the procedure of bringing a new text to the meeting and having it accepted is legal, the fact is that it happened, it is done, it is past. And even if we had kept our original draft, I am positive that the final result would have been the same, i.e., a vote of no confidence.
Staff members are very, very upset, with the SG, specially after he called us selfish. It was an insult on various levels which compounded other insults - budget cuts, non papers, downsizing. We have been receiving innumerous calls and e-mails requesting the resolution to be circulated and it already took us too long to do that.
Ramona, Fred and I discussed this until late last night. The resolution will be circulated this morning. Besides some language editing, the only change regards the SG travel section, since the proponents, despite many requests, never provided us with the source of the figure they quoted, and there was a decision during the meeting to couple the figure with reference to the source. So without one, we cannot have the other.
The meeting had a quorum and staff spoke. We will continue to do our job to the best of our ability.
Best, Barbara.
Watch this site.
