Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has polled exactly the same votes as she did in the third round of the Security Council’s votes for the UN Secretary General job.
Advertisement
Guterres, who was Portugal’s center-left Socialist prime minister from 1995-2002 and served as U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees until the end of a year ago, got 11 “encourage” votes, three “discourage” and one “no opinion” in Monday’s poll.
It is the third time that the 67-year-old has taken the number one spot in the contest to succeed Ban Ki-moon, who steps down on Dec 31 after 10 years as the world’s top diplomat.
The concept of the three straw polls has been seen as created to discourage candidates unlikely to win wide support or having any possibility of emerging as a compromise candidate. “He remains well ahead of the pack”, a Security Council diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
There are now 10 candidates in the race, but at least some are likely to drop out after the third straw poll, the last of its kind in this stage of the process to choose a successor to take over as UN Secretary-General from Ban Ki-moon at the start of 2017.
Bulgaria’s Irina Bokova, head of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), tied the third position with Serbia’s Vuk Jeremic, a former president of the UN General Assembly, at 7-5-3.
It is the duty of the 15-member council to forward its recommendation for the next secretary-general to the 193-member General Assembly to vote on.
The August 29 vote saw Argentina’s Susanna Malcorra, reportedly the candidate favoured by the United States, in fourth place, with seven “encourage” votes, seven “discourage” and one “no opinion”.
In the informal polls, council members have voted whether to “encourage”, “discourage”, or express “no opinion” about the 10 candidates five men and five women.
Clark picked up six encouragements, eight “discourage” votes and one “no opinion”, compared to six encouragements, seven “discourage” votes and two “no opinion” for Kerim.
Former Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic dropped out of the race prior to the second ballot, while Montenegro Foreign Minister Igor Luksic withdrew last week.
Slovenia’s former president Danilo Turk, who had made a strong showing as the runnerup in the first round, dropped to the bottom tier, with five encouragements, six “discourage” votes and four “no opinion”.
In the first straw poll, Bokova was jointly in third place with two other candidates.
Russian Federation has said it will give priority to eastern European candidates, but has not ruled out that contenders from other regions could be qualified for the post. The first-ever “globally televised” debate for the United Nations chief election was held on Tuesday among 10 of the 12 candidates.
Advertisement
A number of candidates who fared poorly in the latest straw poll will now be under pressure to drop out of the race.
