Portugal’s former PM set to be new UN chief
Print Edition
FORMER Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres is poised to become the next United Nations Secretary-General after none of the five UN Security Council veto powers voted against him in a sixth secret ballot yesterday.
The 15-member Security Council cast secret ballots for each of the 10 candidates with the choices of encourage, discourage or no opinion. Guterres received 13 encourage votes and two no opinion votes.
“Today after our sixth straw poll we have a clear favorite and his name is Antonio Guterres,” Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters with his 14 council colleagues standing behind him.
“We have decided to go to a formal vote tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock, and we hope it can be done by acclamation,” said Churkin, who is council president for October.
For Guterres to be formally recommended to the 193-member General Assembly for election, the Security Council still needs to adopt a resolution behind closed doors. The resolution needs at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes to pass.
Guterres is a self-described man of action who earned his stripes as the world body’s refugee chief, tirelessly pressing rich nations to do more.
An engineer by training and fervent Catholic, Guterres, 67, fought for migrants’ rights over a decade as UN High Commissioner for Refugees from June 2005 to December 2015.
Frequently also touted as a possible candidate for president of Portugal, the Socialist Guterres said he has declined to run because he would rather “play ball” than be “a referee.”
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