By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, January 27 – With the UN system facing 40% budget cuts from the US, on January 25 UN Development Program chief Helen Clark confirmed she will leave on April 19. On January 26, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric refused to disclose when Inner City Press asked the process to pick a replacement.
The unwritten process for UNICEF, the UN children's agency, and the World Food Program is better known. The current Democrat Party appointees, Anthony Lake and Ertharin Cousin respectively, are expected to resign and Secretary General Antonio Guterres will ask the US, presumably through Nikki Haley, for three American names.
Will it go that way this time? Will Trump accept the decision being made between three names? If France was able to impose the incompetent Herve Ladsous on the UN, and Spain the censor Cristina Gallach, will even the three-name game now stand?
Beginning on the day Nikki Haley arrived at the UN, and Inner City Press exposed the extension of the contract of Clinton-aligned Jeffrey Feltman so that his UN pension could vest, this will be an Inner City Press series.
Even further back than the US has controlled the UN Department of Political Affairs (through Lynn Pascoe and Jeffrey Feltman, to whom we have questions pending), it has held WFP: Catherine Bertini, James Morris, Josette Sheeran, Etharin Cousin.
And UNICEF, under both political parties (see, Veneman): Bellamy, Veneman, Anthony Lake.
So on January 27, Inner City Press asked the UN's holdover spokesman Stephane Dujarric, after he called Inner City Press' questioning on the use of taxpayers' funds "despicable," this, from the UN Transcript
