António Guterres to be next UN secretary general

António Guterres, the former Portuguese Prime Minister, will be the next UN secretary general, after the security council agreed he should replace Ban Ki-moon at the beginning of next year.

All 15 ambassadors from the security council emerged from the sixth in a series of straw polls to announce that they had agreed on Guterres, who was UN high commissioner for refugees for a decade, and that they would confirm the choice in a formal vote on Thursday.

“Today after our sixth straw poll we have a clear favourite and his name is António Guterres,” the Russian UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said.

“We have decided to go to a formal vote tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock.”

Guterres’s margin of victory was decisive. He won 13 votes in his support and two abstentions, with no one voting against him. The second-place candidate, the Slovak Miroslav Lajčák, had seven votes in support and six against him – two of them vetoes from permanent council members.

According to the Guardian, many observers had expected the selection process for the UN leadership position to go on late into October as the major powers struggled to promote their favourite candidates.