The UN Security Council held its first secret straw poll on Thursday, launching the decisive phase of the race to select the organisation's next secretary general and offering the first indication of how the seven candidates are faring behind closed doors.
After the first round of the poll, Security Council President Zenon Mukongo Ngay said the candidates would be notified of the outcome through the permanent representatives of the member states that nominated them.
In the non-binding voting by the 15 members of the Security Council, Costa Rica's Rebeca Grynspan received 10 “encourage” votes, nine for Guyana's Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett and seven for Argentina's Rafael Grossi, according to Reuters.
Mr Ngay, the Democratic Republic of the Congo's UN ambassador, said council members had not yet agreed on the timing of the next round of straw poll.
“In the days to come, we will know exactly,” he said. Member states “want transparency at the same time, efficiency, but … don't want speculations on that”.
The Security Council does not publicly share the results of straw polls, a long-standing practice intended “to keep everything closed”.
No Secretariat officials were present, no official record of the results was kept, and the paper ballots were destroyed after they were counted. Bahrain and Pakistan were appointed as tellers to oversee the ballot.
Under procedures agreed by council members earlier this year, each of the 15 delegations cast one ballot for every candidate, marking each candidate as “encouraged,” “discouraged” or “no opinion expressed”.
The straw polls are informal, non-binding votes designed to test the viability of candidates before the Council formally recommends one nominee to the 193-member General Assembly.
“It’s an important start of the process,” Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN, Asim Ahmad, said ahead of the vote. “There are good candidates in the field. and I think it's our responsibility to select the best one.”
The informal straw poll marks the culmination of months of campaigning that led candidates to participate in General Assembly dialogue, Security Council meetings, civil society town halls and a televised debate, as they sought to convince diplomats they could steer the world body through deepening geopolitical rivalry, wars, financial strain and questions over its relevance.
Four women and three men are competing to succeed Antonio Guterres, whose second five-year term ends on December 31.
The candidates are Michelle Bachelet of Chile, Maria Fernanda Espinosa of Ecuador, Rafael Grossi of Argentina, Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica, Olara Otunnu of Uganda, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana and Macky Sall of Senegal.
While Mr Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is widely regarded as the highest-profile contender, experts say there is no clear front-runner in what is expected to be a prolonged selection process.
“There is a real sense around the UN that the next secretary general will play a decisive role in shaping the future of the organisation,” Richard Gowan, programme director of global issues and institutions at the International Crisis Group, told The National. “The UN is badly adrift, facing repeat financial crises and political marginalisation in an era of geopolitical competition.”
Mr Gowan said Mr Guterres has largely succeeded in keeping the institution functioning despite those pressures but argued his successor would face the more difficult challenge of restoring its relevance.
“If she or he fails, the UN is not going to collapse but it will continue to lose value as a platform for international co-operation,” he said.
He also warned expectations for the next secretary general should be tempered, given that many of the organisation's problems stem from rivalry among major powers rather than its leadership.
“It's unfair to ask any one person to save a global institution. Even a dedicated and talented secretary general may not be able to overcome the powerful geopolitical headwinds facing the UN,” Mr Gowan said.
“But UN officials and diplomats do not have many better ideas about how to prop up the UN. A good secretary general is the UN's only hope.”
The selection over the next secretary-general comes as the US presses the UN to overhaul its operations under the UN80 reform initiative.
US ambassador Mike Waltz said the organisation needed to consolidate agencies, reduce its headquarters footprint and redirect resources toward field operations.
"We're off to a good start with the UN80, but we still need agencies consolidated, less headquarters, more field, and more of each dollar... actually helping people in need," Mr Waltz told reporters. "So less people here and more out there in the field."
