United Nations Security Council held the seventh round of intentions-based voting for the next Secretary-General on October 30th.
Two people familiar with the matter told Reuters that former Costa Rican Vice President Greenpan has further expanded its lead, becoming the top candidate for the position of tenth Secretary-General of the United Nations.
The Council's advisory vote was conducted behind closed doors, with only representatives of the Council members present. The results were not recorded officially and were not made public. The voting intentions were 'encourage', 'discourage', and 'no opinion'.
In the voting among the 15 members of the Security Council, she received 11 votes of “encouragement” and 4 votes of “discouragement”. This is the best result she has achieved in the seven closed-door votes conducted over the past few months.
The formal nomination by the Security Council will be subject to a formal vote. Usually, a formal vote is only initiated when there is a clear chance of a candidate winning, requiring at least 9 'encouragement' votes, and none of the five permanent members of the Council should vote 'not encouragement'.
Reuters reports that the 30-day bottom-up voting results have not disclosed the respective vote preferences of the five major countries.
In the six round of primary votes over the past few months, five rounds showed Greenspan leading with a narrow margin. In the August primary vote alone, Caroline Rodriguez-Burkett, a permanent representative of Guyana to the United Nations, ranked first.
In the voting on Friday, Rodrigues-Barkette received 8 "encouragement" votes and ranked third. Rafael Mariano Grosi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, came in second with 9 "encouragement" votes.
UAE diplomat Lana Nussebe said she would run for election earlier. Friday was her first day participating in the preliminary voting, where she ranked fourth, receiving 7 “encouraging” votes, 6 “non-encouraging” votes, and 2 “no opinion” votes.
In 2016, when the outgoing Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was elected, the Security Council had to go through six rounds of preliminary voting before reaching a consensus.
