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To UN Opposing Guterres Inner City Press Filed to PGA & Asks US State Dept Now Whistleblower Asks

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SDNY COURTHOUSE, March 27 – How corrupt and undemocratic is today's United Nations?

Well, now that Antonio Guterres is pushing for a second five-year term, while banning the Press for the 998th day for daring to ask about his finances and failures, he has collaborators. 

  The current President of the General Assembly Volkan Bozkir, a strongman from Turkey who due to his bigoted comments even pro-UN New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wouldn't meet with, has the duty of circulating letters from candidates. 

  But throughout February and now March 2021, Bozkir refused to circulate the letter of UN staffer candidate Arora Akanksha.

Bozkir's spokesman Brendan Varma, who blocks Inner City Press on Twitter, continues to dance around what the rules are and won't answer. 

 So, as a test - and to raise the issue of the UN's lack of content neutral media access rules, lack of a Freedom of Information Act (fought for the Free UN Coalition for Access) and lack of scruples - Inner City Press on the morning of February 26 submitted a signed letter and C.V. to the PGA's Office and to Varma.  Since then, fiveweeks of dodging and blockage, now of five:

From: Emma Reilly Date: Sat, Mar 27, 2021 at 7:11 PM Subject: Question re. submission of SG candidacy To: varmab@un.org Cc: AG ag@un.org, arora.akanksha@undp.org, Matthew R. Lee (@InnerCityPress / @MatthewLeeICP)

Dear Brenden,  Kindly send full details of email and physical addresses for submission of my candidacy for UN Secretary-General.  The current Secretary-General has been unable to enforce his written decision for my protection as a whistleblower for three full years (his letter dated 2 April 2018). Such inability to command the respect of his managers must be of concern.  Deliberately deceiving member states about breaches of rules set by those member states is not compliant with the UN Charter. The tape recordings of hearings in my legal cases show that a majority of member states have been deliberately misled by the UN Secretariat, and that the Secretary-General argues a right to lie to member states about his own policies..   I look forward to your earliest response. I copy the other candidates of whom I am aware. Let us have open debates.  Regards, Emma Reilly

  Note: One of the reasons Inner City Press filed was to ensure that actual opponents to Guterres, who know of and will raise his abuses, would be in.

On March 26, Inner City Press asked US State Department Ambassador Erica Barks-Ruggles this:

MS PORTER:  We will go to the line of Matthew Russell Lee. 

QUESTION:  One of the controversies right now in the UN is this – if Antonio Guterres is up for re-election, and the question is whether there will be other candidates.  There are at least four candidates who have provided names and CVs, but they haven’t been circulated to the member-states both by the president of the General Assembly you mentioned and even by the U.S. mission this month, the president of the Security Council.  I wanted to know what’s the administration’s – I mean, does that seem right?  Is that something that the Secretary’s going to discuss?  And what’s the mission’s thinking on not having circulated names during this month?  And one other thing, it’s something that the UN has – the council has not worked on, but does the administration think that there’s a UN role in dealing with the ongoing kind of mass killings in the Anglophone areas of Cameroon?  The issue has been going on for some years and the Council has had a few AOBs, but never actually met on or done anything on. 

AMBASSADOR BARKS-RUGGLES:   On the secretary-general race, we, of course, as members of the Council and permanent members of the Council, will be very much engaged in this process.  We obviously work closely with the current secretary-general and will look forward to that strong and constructive relationship continuing, and I think that that’s – that will be part of the discussions that Secretary Blinken will have with the secretary-general.  But I’m not going to get into the details of diplomatic discussions.  On Cameroon, I’m sorry.  I don’t have anything for you on that at this point.  It has not been discussed in the Security Council up to this point.

We'll have more on this.

  On March 25, Bozkir's spokesman Brenden Varma, who blocks Inner City Press on Twitter, announced that "there is only one candidate" and that he will hold a North Korea-like one-man debate on May 7. Debate? This is corruption. We will have more on this. Watch this site.

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