Rebeca Grynspan pulls ahead in race to lead United Nations

Costa Rica's Rebeca Grynspan appeared to be pulling ahead in the race to lead the United Nations after the fourth round of informal polling on Tuesday, a diplomat said.

Grynspan, a veteran diplomat who leads the UN trade and development body (UNCTAD) has come top in three of the four straw polls – but a veto from the five permanent members of the 15-member UN Security Council could derail her momentum.

She received 10 favourable votes Tuesday and three negative votes of "discourage," with two indications of no opinion, according to the diplomat who declined to be named, echoing specialist UN media reports.

A total of seven candidates – four women and three men – are vying to succeed the outgoing secretary-general, António Guterres of Portugal, who ends his second five-year term on December 31, 2026.

Guyanese ex-foreign minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, who narrowly led the second round of the secret process to pick the next UN chief, came second with eight endorsements, six negatives and one no opinion.

Other candidates include third-placed Argentina's Rafael Grossi, the current head of the UN nuclear watchdog, who is said to have received eight positive votes, seven negatives and zero no opinions.

The others still in the race include Macky Sall of Senegal, Ecuador's Ivonne A-Baki, Ecuador's Maria Fernanda Espinosa and Uganda's Olara Otunnu.

Several of the candidates are known to have met with world leaders during the General Assembly, the UN's signature diplomatic event, at the New York headquarters last week.

Rumours persist that a compromise candidate could be parachuted into the process at the behest of the powerful five veto-wielding Security Council members–- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

Even if a candidate earns the required nine votes from the 15 available in the Security Council, they must also avoid a veto by the five major powers, which are deeply divided.

Once a candidate clears those bars, their name will go to the General Assembly of all UN members for confirmation.

The Security Council straw poll was devised in the early 1980s in an attempt to break a deadlock between two candidates shut down by vetoes. The informal mechanism has persisted, in various forms, despite criticism from countries opposed to the opaque process.

Each of the 15 Security Council members must anonymously assign each candidate one of three labels: "encourage," "discourage," or "no opinion." 

But after an unspecified number of votes, the ballots of the Council's five permanent members will have a different colour, making it possible to identify potential vetoes, without knowing which country blackballed any given candidate.

Tuesday's vote was held without colour-coded straws, the rotating president of the security council, France's UN envoy Jerome Bonnafont, said when confirming that voting had concluded. He did not say when the next round would be held.

It is tradition that the UN's top job should rotate between different regions.

Under that premise, the role should go to a candidate from Latin America this time.

– TIMES/AFP