UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres (Photo : UN)
António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and former President of the Socialist International, is the new United Nations Secretary General.
Guterres, 67, was also 10th United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, holding office from June 2005 to December 2015. It was his successes during his decade-long stewardship of the UNHCR that made him the runaway winner after the sixth straw poll among the 15 members of the UN Security Council showed him the runaway favorite.
On October 5, Guterres was appointed unanimously by all Security Council member states as the candidate to succeed Ban Ki-moon of South Korea.
According to UN rules, the Security Council will put Guterres' name forward for a vote by the 193 member General Assembly. The UN General Assembly will likely approve the nomination, making Guterres the ninth UN Secretary General.
But first, the Security Council will have to officially nominate Guterres by adopting a formal resolution on October 6, which must then be also adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
Guterres officially becomes UN Secretary General on January 1, 2017. He will hold office for five years.
"Today (Oct. 5), after our sixth straw poll we have a clear favorite, and his name is Antonio Guterres," said Vitaly Churkin, Russian ambassador to the UN.
Thirteen candidates entered the race, most from Eastern Europe, which has never had a UN Secretary General before. Some observers felt it was Eastern Europe's time to lead the UN, and one of these candidates, Kristalina Georgieva from Bulgaria, was a leading bet among the Eastern European candidates.
Would she have won, Georgieva would have become both the first female Secretary General and the first from Eastern Europe.
To recommend the Secretary General, the 15 Security Council members assess each candidate by voting "encourage," "discourage" or "no opinion." In the sixth vote, Guterres received 13 "encourage" votes, no "discourage" votes and two votes of "no opinion."
Before this vote, the candidate considered his closest potential rival was Georgieva. She, however, fared badly in this round of voting at the Security Council.
Only a veto by Russia will prevent Guterres from becoming Secretary General and that's considered unlikely given Russia's need to shore up its badly battered international image caused by its relentless bombing of Syrian civilians in the besieged city of Aleppo.
