The race to choose the next United Nations secretary-general has a frontrunner — and a warning sign hanging over her. Costa Rican diplomat Rebeca Grynspan secured the nine Security Council votes needed to advance in the Council's latest informal straw poll, according to Devex, which follows the selection process closely. But she also faced opposition from two of the Council's permanent members, which means the threat of a veto remains over her candidacy.

Source: Devex

Straw polls are the Security Council's private way of testing candidates: members mark each name “encourage”, “discourage” or “no opinion”, and the ballots of the five permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France — are counted separately because any one of them can block the final recommendation to the General Assembly. Reaching nine votes clears the numerical hurdle; discouragement from permanent members is the obstacle that has ended candidacies before.

The same round of voting has already claimed one candidate. Former Senegalese president Macky Sall announced he is withdrawing after the Council's October 16 informal ballot gave him five encouraging votes and ten discouraging ones, with three of the discouraging votes reportedly coming from permanent members. Sall said he had consulted Burundi's President Évariste Ndayishimiye, who chairs the African Union, and Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, who chairs ECOWAS, before stepping aside to help a consensus candidate emerge.

Source: The Moment NG

Sall also acknowledged that successive ballots had pointed towards support for a candidate from Latin America and the Caribbean, potentially a woman — a description that fits Grynspan. Nigeria was among the African Union members that objected to the procedure used to seek a collective African endorsement of Sall, and it had argued that the next secretary-general should come from Latin America and the Caribbean under the UN's informal principle of regional rotation.

The race is far from over. New candidates can still enter at any point, other declared candidates — including the UAE's Lana Nusseibeh, whose entry Awaaz Punjab reported earlier — remain in contention, and the Council has not said when it will move from straw polls to a formal recommendation. Whoever emerges will succeed António Guterres at the head of the world body at a time of multiple wars and a strained UN budget.