Candidates for UN top job given public hearing

The United Nations has launched its first ever public auditions for the job of UN secretary general, with candidates facing a hail of questions on how they would confront some of the world’s most serious problems.

National and regional representatives at the UN general assembly asked how the applicants would deal with climate change and conflict prevention and resolution, and quizzed them repeatedly on how they would confront the shortcomings of the UN itself.

The open airing of problems and grievances, streamed live on UN web TV on Tuesday, was in dramatic contrast to the selection of the current and earlier secretaries-general, which was negotiated largely in secret by the permanent members of the security council: China, Russia, France, the UK and the US.

Under the UN charter, those five major powers will still have the final say in the choice of the replacement for Ban Ki-moon, who steps down at the beginning of next year, and the whole process will ultimately require a compromise between the US and Russia, as it has in years past.

But less powerful UN states hope that the public hearings could make it impossible for Washington and Moscow to ignore global opinion entirely and foist their own compromise candidate on the general assembly (GA) at the last moment.

“We are sailing into uncharted waters here,” said Mogens Lykketoft, a Danish politician who is the current GA president. He called the selection process a “potential gamechanging exercise” that could lead to a single candidate emerging as the clear favourite of member states, making it difficult for the security council to choose another candidate.

Tuesday marked the start of three days of GA hearings, at which the eight candidates who have declared so far have been given two hours to make a presentation and then answer questions from GA members as well as a handful of civil society organisations that sent pre-recorded videos.

The first candidate to face the GA’s scrutiny was Montenegro’s foreign minister, Igor Lukšić followed by Bulgaria’s nominee, Irina Bokova, the director general of Unesco, the UN’s culture and education agency.

Lukšić suggested creating a powerful deputy secretary general, who would take a leading role in conflict resolution and prevention. He said the position should be given to a woman, in an effort to deflect strong pressure in the GA for a woman to be given the top job he is applying for, and would be based in Nairobi, reflecting criticism from developing countries that the UN is still dominated by the rich industrial world.

He said he would consider setting up a special tribunal to try UN peacekeepers responsible for human rights violations, like the sexual abuse uncovered in Central African Republic.

Asked by the UN permanent representative, Matthew Rycroft, what the modern UN’s purpose should be, Lukšić replied: “We don’t want to see the United Nations becoming irrelevant... we can’t ignore realities… and the current structure of the UN security council does not reflect today’s realities.”

He said he would work for reform and conflict resolution “not by being very noisy but by being an honest broker”.

Bokova is widely seen as a leading candidate as she is a woman with a lot of UN institutional experience, comes from eastern Europe, which has not yet provided a secretary general, and is thought to be acceptable to Moscow. But that in turn arouses western suspicions that she would be soft on Russian military intervention in countries such as Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere.

In her remarks Bokova insisted she would take a firm stand on human rights. “The secretary general has a moral authority and a stand to advocate and to talk to world leaders. I think this is an important responsibility,” she said.

The third candidate to speak was António Guterres, the former prime minister of Portugal and a former UN high commissioner for refugees. Like the other candidates he was asked how he would resist pressure from the big powers on the security council.

“I cannot say that I will not avoid pressure but I can resist pressure. Independence is an attitude. I don’t think I will change,” Guterres replied.

The other contenders to appear before the assembly in the next two days are: Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand and another frontrunner favoured for her experience running the UN development programme; Danilo Türk, former president of Slovenia; Vesna Pusić, former foreign minister of Croatia; Natalia Gherman, former foreign minister of Moldova, Srgjan Kerim, former foreign minister of Macedonia,and Vuk Jeremic, former foreign minister of Serbia.

More candidates are expected to enter the race in the next few weeks, including potentially strong contenders such as the serving Argentinian foreign minister, Susana Malcorra, who gained a reputation for even-handedness and efficiency at the UN as Ban’s top aide, and her Colombian counterpart, María Angela Holguín.

The difficulty facing all the candidates is how to sound as if they would be a strong and independent secretary general without being so strong or so independent that they would challenge the interests of the major powers in the Security Council. As a result, most have opted for vagueness.

In a column for World Politics Review titled Secretary General Candidates Seem Intent on Making the UN Boring Again, Richard Gowan, a UN specialist at the European Council for Foreign Relations, said the “candidates behave rather like teenagers required to meet their sweetheart’s parents for the first time, trying to sound convincingly responsible before the general assembly, even as they eagerly await their time alone with the decision-makers in Beijing, London, Moscow, Paris and Washington”.

Being too bland can also be a risk. One senior UN diplomat said that Bokova had undermined her chances by seeming too dry and colourless. “I thought she could be a lead contender but less so after those two hours,” the diplomat said.

On Wednesday, some of the candidates will take part in separate hustings in New York – co-hosted by the Guardian, the UN Association of the UK and the thinktanks New America and Future UN Development System – where they will face more questions from the public and NGOs.