United Nations, Nov 6 (SocialNews.XYZ) The top candidate, Costa Rica's Rebecca Grynspan, inched up in the race to succeed Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, according to the latest poll of the Security Council.
The newest entrant, Turkey's candidate Feridun Sinirlioglu, who was nominated by his country's President Recip Tayyip Erdogan over the weekend, fared poorly in the anonymous straw poll on Thursday.
He came in sixth among the eight contestants receiving eight negative votes and only three positive votes.
The Council has less than two months to decide who should take over the UN's leadership on January 1, and the choice is effectively in the hands of the five veto-wielding permanent members who must agree on the candidate to send to the General Assembly for what is a routine approval.
The poll was rushed through because Sinirlioglu had not participated in an informal meeting the General Assembly convenes for candidates to speak about their platform and answer questions from member countries and civil society participants.
The Assembly has insisted that candidates must participate in such meetings, and Sinirlioglu's is set for Friday.
Grynspan, who is the head of UNCTAD, pared her negative votes by one -- from four in the seventh poll last month, to three in the latest -- increasing her positive tally to 12.
It was unclear how she or the others fared among the veto-wielding members of the Council as the ballots were not colour-coded to identify theirs.
Grynspan received two negative votes from permanent members in the sixth poll last month, the only one colour-coded.
She has led in seven of the eight polls, but would have to overcome the vetoes to become the secretary-general.
Turkey nominated Sinirlioglu, the secretary-general of the 57-member Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), after the regional rival United Arab Emirates put up Lana Nusseibeh, the minister of state for foreign affairs.
She stayed in fourth place, retaining seven positive votes, six negative and two neutral that she had received in her first straw poll last month.
Rafael Grossi, the Argentine heading the International Atomic Energy Agency, retained the second spot with nine positive votes, four negative and two neutral.
Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, a former foreign minister of Guyana, came next with eight positive votes. Five negative and two neutral.
In straw polls, members vote “encourage”, interpreted as positive, “discourage” as negative, and “no opinion” as neutral.
In keeping with the ground rules, Sanita Pavluta-Deslandes, Latvia's permanent representative who heads the Council this month, did not announce the results, but they were leaked to PassBlue and 1for8Billion, which cover the UN in-depth.
After nine men heading the UN for all its 80 years, leaders of many countries said during the General Assembly's September high-level meeting that they support electing a woman as the secretary-general.
Countries from Latin America, including the Caribbean, have said the next UN head should be from their region since it is 35 years since anyone from there held the office after Javier Perez de Cuellar ended his term in 1991.
The top three candidates are from the region.
Olaru Otunnu, a former under-secretary-general and Uganda's foreign minister, came fifth.
Maria Fernanda Espinosa, a former president of the General Assembly and Ecuador’s foreign minister, was in seventh place, and Ivonne A-Baki, a former Ecuadorian ambassador to the US, finished last.
Source: IANS
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