UN GATE / SDNY COURT, Aug 3 — July 30 brought the first straw poll on the tenth Secretary-General, with Bahrain and Pakistan serving as tellers and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as July's Council President, to give a readout afterward - without giving the results.
The comedy of secrecy was
endorsed by supposed reformer Mike Waltz, who said
off-camera he had agreed to it - and though the voting
favoring Rebeca Grynspan, who among many other things wasted
taxpayers' money on a Lear Jet to Afghanistan, Waltz
off camera called it a "good start."
Inner City Press, banned from
entering the UN now with the complicity of Waltz and his
US Mission to the UN, characterizes this as KUNCA (Keep
the UN Corrupt Again) rather than Waltz' blue cap-printed
MUNGA (Make the UN Great Again, it being unclear when
Waltz thinks it was great, whether under Nazi Kurt
Waldheim, Kofi Annan, inarticulate Ban Ki-moon or
censorious Antonio Guterres).
On August 3, what was supposed to be
a multi-participant debate in Uruguay was (much) less than
promised:
The Latin America and Caribbean region held its first regional dialogue with its five nominated candidates for UN Secretary-General on August 3, hosted by Uruguay under its CELAC pro tempore presidency. Billed as bringing together Michelle Bachelet, MarÃa Fernanda Espinosa, and Rebeca Grynspan in the room, with Rafael Mariano Grossi and Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett joining remotely, the actual roster on the day was thinner than advertised: Bachelet did not appear, sending her apologies. Grossi did not appear live either — his contribution was a pre-recorded video. Too busy using the IAEE and his sock puppets to appear? Only Espinosa and Grynspan engaged as originally billed, alongside Rodrigues-Birkett online.
A dialogue billed as the region's chance to hear "firsthand" from its candidates delivered, in the end, two candidates live and in person, one on video, one no-show.
Meanwhile inside the UN Demark's Ambassador
Christina Markus Lassen, who refused to answer Inner City
Press' written inquiry (unlike Ghana and, to some degree,
Liberia) said that the next straw poll won't be until
August 21. Inner City Press live You Tube here.
Improvements are needed at all levels.
In May, Inner City Press filed a FOIA
request with State and USUN for how Waltz spends the
US public's money at the UN - two months later, not a
single document. Nor has USUN answered two formal
letters submitted through its website, the only
method offered to contact it from outside. KUNCA.
Waltz's quote, by choice off-camera and not
to the Press, saying what he called “deliberations†will be kept
confidential as agreed by all Council members - that is,
USUN as well: "the process is underway,
first time in 10 years. The Security Council will come to
its conclusions in the coming months, I suspect. We need a
secretary-general that is going to reform this
institution, that is going to make it leaner and more fit
for purpose, more relevant on the international
stage. We’re off to a good start with the UN80" -
that is, Antonio Guterres' fig leaf initiative for which
Waltz is now claiming credit.
On Rebeca Grynspan, her dubious
relevance (as with Ban Ki-moon, few outside the UN and her
own county have heard of her, she wasn't even president of
Costa Rica), her waste versus "leanness," UNCTAD staff
wrote to banned Inner City Press, see below.
Back in 2015, Inner City Press stood in
that hallway. This year, banned from the building for
eight years under Antonio Guterres, it cannot, and now it
appears neither can UNTV's own cameras. This
morning, letters went out — to France and the United
Kingdom as permanent Council members, to Pakistan and
Bahrain as this morning's tellers, to the Democratic
Republic of the Congo as the Council President who will
give whatever readout there is, and to Colombia, Greece,
Latvia, Liberia, Panama, and Somalia as the Council's
other current members. Liberia to its credit confirmed
receipt.
But note that Rebeca Grynspan refused to answer the Press questionnaire, nor anything on the Press being banned (more on that, including our letter to the Mission sponsoring her, coming next). Jet here.
Is she a hack? This is what
UNCTAD staff say:
"Grynspan has publicly stated that the
selection process 'must be based on competence' and not
merely gender. This should guide all member states.
Applying it rigorously, can we honestly say that a male
candidate with her profile would command serious
consideration? She served as Vice President of Costa Rica,
a country of approximately 5 million people, nearly three
decades ago, with limited direct experience in peace and
security. Her most recent high-profile role involved
leading UNCTAD, a small think tank, where she reads
prepared statements rather than conducting high-stakes
mediation or conflict resolution. Countries
seeking a stronger, more agile UN capable of addressing
wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, and beyond should ask
whether this CV represents the strongest available
leadership, particularly when other candidates bring
deeper credentials in nuclear diplomacy,
presidential-level executive experience, or direct crisis
mediation. Grynspan talks about meritocracy, yet her
record at UNCTAD suggests otherwise. Upon assuming
leadership, she manoeuvred for her longtime Spanish
confidant and former Chief of Staff from the
Ibero-American General Secretariat to become Deputy
Secretary-General. She has concentrated Latin American
allies in senior positions, including as heads of
communications, human resources, and the New York office,
and has Spanish-speaking heads or chiefs of staff in every
division. This pattern risks turning a global body into a
regional fiefdom. Her history of patronage weakens trust
and morale while undermining the UN’s claim to represent
all Member States equally." Then there is the Aghan Lear
jet waste, first reported by Inner City Press... And
something raised by staff about her sister.... What are
the answers? We await.
The letters may have done something:
unlike this morning's uncertainty, a UNTV camera was
present for the Democratic Republic of the Congo's readout
as July's Council President. But Ambassador Zénon Mukongo
Ngay declined to disclose the actual results of the first
straw poll — the vote count that, in 2015, Inner City
Press could get simply by standing in the hallway outside
the Council chamber and asking the delegates walking out.
This year, with X Live still nonfunctional after weeks of
unresolved platform problems, Inner City Press streamed
what coverage it could manage on YouTube instead, here.
What's missing is not incidental. In 2015,
being inside the building meant being able to ask a
delegate directly, off the cuff, what the numbers actually
were, even when the official readout was vague. Banned
from UN Headquarters for eight years, with an
accreditation application now five days old and still
"awaiting approval," Inner City Press cannot do that —
cannot catch an ambassador in the hallway, cannot ask a
follow-up, cannot press a source who might say more than
the President chose to. A camera being present is not the
same as the Council actually saying anything. On both
counts — access to the building, and now apparently the
substance of the readout itself — the process is less
transparent than it was a decade ago. The UN is getting
worse, not better, at exactly the moment it says it is
choosing who should lead it next.
Inner City Press has covered this
exact mechanism before — a decade ago, in 2016, when the
Council chose António Guterres.
The difference this time is not the
process. It's that Inner City Press can no longer walk
into the building to ask about it. In 2016, the
informal, non-binding straw polls ran through the summer
and fall: the first held July 21, with Japan's Ambassador
Koro Bessho, that month's rotating Council President,
telling Inner City Press directly that the results "will
be confidential. We'll see."
A third poll followed August 29, still
without colored ballots. Colored-ballot straw polls — a
later refinement in which the five veto-wielding permanent
members' preferences are specifically marked,
distinguishing their views from the other ten Council
members' — came further along in the process. Fourth and
fifth polls followed September 9 and 26, under New
Zealand's presidency, before Guterres emerged as the
choice that October.
At every one of those monthly presidency
handovers, Inner City Press was in the room, or in the
stakeout position outside the Council chamber, asking the
rotating president directly: will there be a press
stakeout after the closed-door consultation on the straw
poll? Can the process be made more transparent? On behalf
of the Free UN Coalition for Access, Inner City Press
pressed New Zealand's Ambassador Gerard van Bohemen on
exactly this in September 2016, alongside questions about
Burundi, Western Sahara, and the UN's failures in Juba.
The answers were often noncommittal —
"We'll see" was Bessho's own phrase for it — but the
questions were asked, in person, monthly, by a journalist
physically present to ask them again the next month if the
answer didn't hold. That access ended on July 3,
2018, when Inner City Press was physically removed from UN
Headquarters covering the Fifth (Budget) Committee, and
barred from re-entry two days later.
Eight years later, as the Security Council
prepares tomorrow's first straw poll on Guterres's
successor, Inner City Press cannot walk into the stakeout
position to ask this year's rotating president — Denmark,
for August — the same question it asked New Zealand and
Japan a decade ago. It can only write a letter, as it did
this week to Denmark's Permanent Representative, asking
that access to the August 3 briefing be arranged by WebEx,
and that Denmark's Presidency intervene with MALU on the
accreditation application still, per MALU's own words,
merely "awaiting approval."
The straw poll process itself remains
what it was in 2016: informal, confidential by the
Council's own description, run entirely behind closed
doors, with the public and press dependent entirely on
what leaks out or what a rotating president chooses to say
at a stakeout — assuming, this year, that the press is
even let in to reach one. For this first one, DRC seems to
so no color coding for P5 members. But the blocks and
vetos are in the air: US of Bachelet, China of Grossi,
we'll have more on this. For now, this
book.
Ten years ago, "we'll see" was an answer
given in person, to a question asked in person, with the
prospect of asking it again next month.
This year, "we'll see" is what Inner City
Press is left to say about whether anyone answers the
letters at all. Watch this site.
