Antonio Guterres all set to become new UN Chief
Antonio Guterres the former Prime Minister of Portugal is all set to become the next UN secretary-general as all the five Security Council veto-wielding powers voted in his favour in a secret ballot. The Security Council which has 15 members had cast ballots for all the 10 candidates with three choices of encourage, discourage and no opinion. Guterres bagged 13 encourage votes and 2 no-opinion votes. It was after the sixth straw poll that Antonio emerged as the clear favourite of all. Russian UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin who is the council president for the month of October has stated that a formal voting will be held tomorrow by acclamation. Before the formal recommendation of Guterres to the General Assembly, there has to be a resolution adopted by the Security Council in closed door session in which he has to bag atleast nine votes in favour and no vetoes to pass.
In all the five straw polls Guterres had emerged at front, the sixth poll was the first of its kind as coloured ballot papers were used to represent the five permanent members of the Security Council. This was highly effective to know which of the veto-power states have exercised the same and against which candidate. Guterres had not got any discourage vote which clarifies that he has no –one against him.
Antonio Guterres is the formal UN High Commissioner for Refugees from 2005-2015 and also the former Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995-2002. It was during his term, Guterres saw the most drastic and huge displacement crisis ever since the end of World War II. It was the most difficult structural reform process in the history of UNHCR. Guterres had led the response teams in cases of Syrian civil war, Refugee crisis in Europe, the Eastern Ukranian conflict of 2014, the Gazan war of 2009 and also the great Asian Tsunami in 2004. He also led the UN refugee agency.
Guterres will replace Mr. Ban-ki-moon in January. In his choice UN has ignored the tradition of rotation of presidency by region as otherwise the candidate should have been from eastern Europe. Latter is the only region which has never had a chance to be at the helm of UN. Even the pressure to select a woman for the top position has been ignored.
