Third Straw Poll for the next United Nations Secretary General

The third straw poll for the new United Nations Secretary General happened today and there have been some interesting developments.

The largest change has been Miroslav Lajčák moving from tenth to second with now 9 encourage (up from 2) and 5 discourage (down from 6 and only 1 no opinion).

Miroslav was until the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia a member of the Communist Party.  He has been Slovakia’s ambassador to Japan and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

He joined the Czechoslovak foreign ministry in 1988. Between 1991 and 1993 Lajčák was posted to the Czechoslovak and subsequently the Slovak embassy in Moscow. He was Slovakia’s Ambassador to Japan to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (later Serbia and Montenegro), Albania and the Republic of Macedonia. He was the EU's supervisor to the 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum.

He has served as Foreign Minister of Slovakia three times and is also severed also as Deputy Prime Minister until March 2016. he was a social democrat but is now not a member of a political party.

Still topping the poll is António Guterres with 11 encourage votes and 3 discourage votes up from 2 and now only 1 no opinion.

In joint third place is Vuk Jeremić (7,5,3) and Irina Bokova (7,5,3) Vuk has lost one of his supporters and gained a discourage and Irina has the same number of encourage (7) but lost 2 discourage votes.

The remaining candidates have all dropped Susana Malcorra from 3rd to 5th (7,7,1) Danilo Türk from 4th to 6th (5,6,4) Srgjan Kerim  6th to 7th (6,7,2) Helen Clark from 7 to 8 (6,8,1. Finally in joint 9th and final place are  Christiana Figueres (2,12,1) and Natalia Gherman (2,12,1).

If the practice of the bottom candidate dropping out something which happened with the previous two rounds, then Christiana and Natalia should drop out leaving eight candidates.

My assumption at this point is that although António Guterres is constantly top he fails the regional test of being from Portugal and the gender hope that governments would choose a woman. I think the Russians will once the veto’s come in be prepared to veto Antonio. He clearly is a very good candidate but from the wrong region and sex.

The west I think do not want to see Vuk Jeremic and so would use their veto’s there. That leaves us with an interesting picture Miroslav Lajčák and Irina Bokova must be the two favorites at this point in the process. I have always thought that this was for Irina to lose she will be the only Eastern Europe woman in the fourth straw poll.

Watch this space