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By Matthew Russell Lee & sources, Exclusive

UN GATE, May 14 – UNESCO, like the whole UN system under Antonio Guterres was been falling apart in corruption and fraud.

  Inner City Press has been reporting on serious malfeasance by the French Audrey Azoulay administration at UNESCO in Paris, almost as bad as Antonio Guterres' corruption in and of the UN in New York. A fish rots from the head.

The UNESCO corruption series is now more than 130 stories long.  In our article about UNESCO of March 24, we wrote that Mexico pushes a dubious candidate for next DG (here). Since then, and as anticipated, Mexican candidate Gabriela Ramos, former ADG for Social and Human Sciences (SHS), has left the Organization and is now actively campaigning.   Despite the revelation of her serious misconduct and abuse of power, instead of withdrawing from the race for the post of UNESCO DG, candidate Ramos has chosen to play the denial card.  In other words, she continues to tell ambassadors and senior national civil servants who ask questions that she has never committed any professional misconduct, nor has she been the subject of an appalling IOS report.

 “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”, is a well-known principle of totalitarian propaganda. Among psychologists something like this behavior of Gabriela Ramos is close to the "illusion of truth" effect. Once she's in the swing of electoral logic, she can't stop lying.  Worse still, Inner City Press has unmasked her once again distorting the truth. It openly questions her integrity, even with regard to the Mexican authorities. Take a closer look. On her social networks, Gabriela Ramos proudly announces that she is President Sheinbaum's candidate. 

At the same time, on May 7, just a few days ago, the President of Mexico expressed a significantly different point of view. At her press conference, President Sheinbaum told journalists the following regarding the question of Gabriela Ramos' candidacy (See here after 44:00 ):  “… she is a Mexican who has been there for many years (…) but we will see (…) she is not a person that we have recommended to UNESCO but she is a Mexican. In these cases, it is also to be seen how consensus is built by the countries and whether or not our proposal is maintained in this particular case”. This is anything but outright support. In fact, it's rare for a president to have shown so little enthusiasm for his country's bid for a top international post.

So, who can be trusted? ADG for SHS Gabriela Ramos with a conclusive IOS investigation report into her harassment case, or the Mexican President? Clearly, Gabriela Ramos is desperately making up stories.  If the seriousness of the IOS report is made public, it's the end of Ramos' candidacy. This aspect remains open for a specific reason. The Chairperson of UNESCO's Executive Board, Vera El Khoury Lacoeuilhe, after receiving a letter addressed to her by the Arab group, in which the group expressed its concerns about the revelations of the IOS report on Gabriela Ramos, did her job in accordance with her duties as head of a governing body. Unlike the President of the General Conference, Romanian ambassador Simona-Mirela Miculescu, who has remained non-existent in the matter of DG Azoulay's violation of the Constitution, Vera El Khoury Lacoeuilhe has formally written to DG Azoulay to request the clarifications required by the Arab group. 

According to our sources, no response from DG Azoulay has yet reached the office of the Chairperson of the Executive Board. We will have more on that in due course.  All electoral games are built on dirty tricks, but tricks don't work every time. Gabriel Ramos' enormous handicap as a awful personnel manager, as described in the IOS report, disqualifies her from the outset. We'll be following developments in the electoral process at UNESCO, a UN agency that is a breeding ground for corruption, embezzlement, abuse of power and nepotism. We will have more on that. Watch this site.

This is where UNESCO stands today. We will have more on that. Watch this site.

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