Results of Straw Poll

The Security Council held a straw poll on Monday, 24 June, to gauge the relative popularity of each candidate for the position of UN Secretary-General.  To be considered by the Security Council, a candidate had to be nominated formally by a Member State.  In this round of voting, there were four official candidates considered by the Council.  Member States were asked to cast a vote of “encourage,” “discourage” or “no opinion” for each candidate.  The results of the poll were reported on Monday evening as follows:

Candidate	Encourage	Discourage	No Opinion
Ban Ki Moon Republic of Korea	12	1	2
Shashi Tharoor India	10	2	3
Surakiart Sathirathai Thailand	7	3	5
Jayantha Dhanapala Sri Lanka	5	6	4

The practice of straw polling is characterized by secrecy, and few, if any, conclusions can be drawn about the Council’s eventual choice from these results, due to the fourteen votes of “no opinion,” as well as the fact that the identity behind each vote was kept hidden.  In past exercises of the straw poll, the votes of veto-empowered Permanent members (P-5) were recorded on a different-colored paper from the elected members, so that a “discourage” could be used to predict a veto of that candidate.  But Monday’s process made it impossible to ascertain how a given member voted.  Only for Ban Ki Moon can it be said with certainty that he received P-5 support, since with a total of 12 “encourage” votes, at least two must have been cast by P-5 members.  However, his single “discourage” vote could very well be from a Permanent member as well.

Implications and Analysis

Observers to the process speculated that holding the straw poll at this early date was an attempt to flush out candidates that were not satisfactory to the P-5 or other Security Council members and encourage additional candidates to be nominated.  According to William Pace of the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy, “No matter the motives for the straw poll, and despite the inconclusive results, it has elements of transparency that the UNSGselection campaign groups have been pushing for – a timetable for decision-making, communication to the General Assembly ahead of the process, and sharing the results with the candidates and their missions, at which point they decided to share the information more broadly.  We welcome those moves.  The more information on the decision-making process and the more time that States, NGOs, and the media have to evaluate candidates, the better the overall process.”

Other expert observers suggested that Council members may have been generous with Ban Ki Moon because he is a sitting Foreign Minister as well as with Shashi Tharoor because he is a senior UN official.  This perhaps contributed to harsher treatment of the other two candidates.  Diplomatic politeness and sense of protocol would not carry high-level candidates past veto votes, however. 

Ambassador Bolton of the U.S. noted in his comments to the press on Monday that future straw polls may reveal the preferences of the P-5.  Mr. Pace interpreted this to mean that the Ambassador may not prefer the equal treatment of veto-possessing nations in the early straw voting. 

Next Steps

The most recent note from the President of the Security Council, Ambassador de la Sablière of France, implied that multiple straw polls could take place (as happened in December 1996).  A South Korean official yesterday indicated that the Council would meet again about SG selection only after the sixty-first session of the General Assembly begins in September.  

It is important to note that the outcome of the straw poll does not require any candidate to withdraw.  It is an indicative vote, still allowing for candidates to take more time to meet with Member States to gain support for their candidacy.  In the previous selection process, in 1996, Kofi Annan received a “red ballot” signifying a P-5 veto in seven rounds of straw polling but gained full P-5 support eventually.

Procedural Note: The Security Council expanded from 11 to 15 members in 1963.  When the UN Charter was updated to reflect this change, it stipulated (Article 27) that all decisions require a majority of nine votes, including the concurrence of the five Permanent members for non-procedural matters.  This applies to the selection of the Secretary-General, despite the fact that GA Resolution 11(1) of 1946 states that only seven votes are needed for SG appointment.

SG Selection in Reform of Working Methods of the Security Council

On 20 July the President of the Security Council issued a note containing recommendations of the Council’s Informal Working Group on Documentation and Other Procedural Issues.  It made mention of the SG selection process only in the defining of private meetings: “to conduct discussion and/or take actions, e.g., recommendation regarding the appointment of the Secretary-General, without the attendance of the public or the press” (OP 35b).  The document, therefore, reaffirmed the closed-door nature of the selection process.