National prestige is the main motive for a government to seek to have one of its citizens elected UN Secretary-General, never mind that once they are installed in the post the umbilical cord between themselves and the home administration which promoted their candidacy is forever severed.
For their part the individual contenders usually see it as the culmination of their ascent up the global ladder, although in a few cases they may not have fully confronted what it could entail. And in this day and age it is very much a poisoned chalice, given that this is a world of bullies rather than one of leaders inspired by the principles which inform the UN Charter. Trigve Lie, the UN’s first SG regarded it as the “hardest job in the world”. Were he alive today he might describe it as the most impossible job in the world.
The current incumbent leaves the post at the end of this year, and the process for appointing his successor is underway. The feeling in many quarters is that it is time to have a woman SG, although it must be said that this was the view in 2016 as well and nonetheless Mr António Guterres was elected. In addition there is a convention, although not a rule, of geographical rotation, and this time it is the turn of South America and the Caribbean. That has not stopped two Africans – a Senegalese and a Ugandan– from appearing on the ballot.
The Guyana Government has nominated Ms Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, its representative at the UN for the post. She is not the first Guyanese to seek to be appointed SG; she was preceded by Shridath Ramphal, who was nominated on two separate occasions when he was Commonwealth Secretary General in the 1980s. It might be noted that Ms Rodrigues Birkett does not have the unanimous support of Caricom; Antigua and Barbuda has nominated an Ecuadorian candidate.
The process of electing an SG is not a simple one. Although technically it is the General Assembly which makes the appointment, what happens in practice is that the members are asked to vote on the single candidate (never more than one) recommended by the Security Council. It is therefore more a case of them giving their imprimatur to a selection already made by the Council. For all of that it is to the General Assembly, not the Security Council, that the aspirants to the post present their visions for the UN through the medium of informal public dialogues followed by a town hall.
In addition to the two Africans and the Guyanese, the other contenders originate from Costa Rica, Ecuador, Argentina and Chile. They have to persuade a Security Council whose current ten elected members are Bahrain, Colombia, Congo, Denmark, Greece, Latvia, Liberia, Pakistan, Panama and Somalia. The problem will come not so much from them, however, as from the five permanent members, or P5, as they are known, who have the power of veto.
Three of these are heavyweights, i.e. the US, Russia and China, and along with them come France and Britain. The latter two try to avoid using their vetoes in other matters, although this might not apply to the SG appointment. Britain’s Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, for example, famously said he would swim the Atlantic twice to prevent Ramphal from becoming SG. On the second occasion the UK had dropped its objections to him, although one of the P5 still used its veto against him.
The Soviets had let it be known that they were not comfortable with Ramphal because he reminded them too much of Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN’s second SG, but because the vote was secret no one knows which country exercised its veto. Ramphal himself said his best information was that it was the Americans, although he had doubts about it.
Whatever the case, the world is not what it was then, nor are the power dynamics in relation to the three heavyweights the same as they were then. The three are not likely to be concerned about whether the next SG is a woman or not, and they probably will not want a candidate who is overly activist either and is therefore likely to criticise their actions. Mr Guterres, for example, earned the eternal hostility of Moscow after he criticised the invasion of Ukraine.
The US is the first impediment for any candidate, since President Trump is contemptuous of the UN and among other things has set up his own Peace Council to take on a responsibility usually discharged by the international body. The intention is clearly to undermine it. He is also highly resentful of the amount of money America pays into the organisation. How seriously he takes the post of SG is reflected in the fact that he suggested Gianni Infantino would be the right man for the job.
One must presume that what Washington wants is an SG who is subservient to America’s interests, and while the other two heavyweights as noted will not be seeking any crusaders for the UN’s founding principles, they will not want someone either who lacks the resilience to confront White House perceptions if required.
The process of election begins with straw polls in the Security Council. The 15 Council members anonymously mark on their ballot paper one of three choices for each candidate: encourage, discourage or no opinion. The first of these signals that a country is prepared for the moment to give its support to a candidate, and the second that it opposes them. If one of the P5 indicates opposition, that could potentially end a candidacy. For someone to be recommended to the General Assembly they must have at least nine votes including the agreement of the P5.
The first of these straw polls which was non-binding was held on July 30th, and produced a result whereby Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica was the leading candidate with 10 encourage votes, one discourage and four no opinions. She was followed by Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett with nine encourage, two discourage and four no opinions, while Rafael Grossi of Argentina who was third secured seven encourage, two discourage and six no opinions. After him came Michelle Bachelet of Chile with six encourage votes but five discourage along with four no opinions.
The critical factor of course is not how many encourage votes a candidate receives, but whether it is a veto nation which registers a discourage vote. It is quite possible, for example, for an aspirant to obtain an impressive number of encourage votes from the elected members of the Security Council and still eventually be vetoed by one of the P5.
Six of the seven candidates have presented their views in the public dialogues at the General Assembly, and according to reports they were more alike than different. But as one analyst put it: “What the candidates think about the United Nations is now largely on the record. What the permanent members think about the candidates is not.”
Exactly who the frontrunners are is a matter for speculation. Those who come up for immediate consideration have a profile in the international political arena. One might have thought, therefore, that Ms Bachelet as the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights would be in the forefront, but in fact the Americans, and not just the White House, are giving out cues she is unacceptable to them.
Of the remainder the two most often mentioned because their global political profiles are known are Ms Grynspan and Mr Grossi. The former is Jewish, and has an impressive international CV having among other things been Director of ECLAC, Under Secretary General of UNDP and Secretary-General of UNCTAD. It was she who negotiated the Black Sea grain initiative in 2022 allowing the exports of grain held hostage by the war in Ukraine. Mr Putin allowed the exports in exchange for UN assistance with his food and fertiliser exports. Unfortunately, he later reneged on the deal.
Mr Grossi has long experience in nuclear policy and disarmament, and in 2019 he became the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He is particularly known for convincing the Ukrainians and Russians to allow UN inspectors access to the Zaporizhia nuclear power station. The Iranians are particularly opposed to his appointment, something which will presumably do him no harm with Mr Trump, although what the other two major members of the P5 think is not known. In any event, Iran does not currently sit on the Security Council.
Then there is our own candidate, Ms Rodrigues Birkett, who unlike the other two does not have a well-known international profile, although it is hard to say whether that will necessarily tell against her. Her main international experience came between 2017 and 2020 when she was director of the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s liaison office in Geneva. Apart from that she has briefly chaired the Security Council, but then so have the representatives of every nation which has sat on it.
One commentator suggested looking at Guyana’s vote at the UN for a sign of her leanings, but that would hardly be a reliable indicator of the approach a national would take after they became an independent international bureaucrat. From the results of the first straw poll it does seem as if the efforts of this country’s diplomats have had some success among the Security Council’s elected members, although whether that includes the P5 who operate according to different considerations only they will know.
In the first straw poll the votes of the P5 were mixed in with those of the others.
It is in the next round, which takes place today, where a distinction is made with the permanent members voting on red paper and everyone else on white. The straw polls will continue until a candidate has no vetoes and a minimum of nine encourage votes. This person is then recommended to the General Assembly, which since 1996 has voted by acclamation.
We wait to see what the second straw poll tells us about how the votes are trending.
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