In the latest United Nations Security Council straw poll for the Secretary General position on Friday, Guyana’s candidate, Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett picked up the second highest number of encouraging votes, but there were two vetoes among the discouraged votes.

Ambassador Rodrigues-Birkett placed second in the straw poll with eight encouraging votes, six discouraged votes and one no-opinion.

All seven of the candidates, including the Costa Rican candidate who continues to top the straw poll, picked up at least one veto in the votes.

For a candidate to succeed in the process, he/she would have to pick up at least 9 encouraging votes with no veto. The UN Security Council, which is tasked with recommending a nominee for the Secretary General position, is made up of 15 members. Of those 15 members, there are 5 permanent members -UK, US, Russia, China and France- who all hold veto powers.

While the previous straw polls did not identify or differentiate the votes cast, in the current stage of the process, the ballots cast by the five Permanent members are color coded and could therefore be identified easily to give candidates a sense of their road to the position.

With all of the candidates picking up at least one veto, it means that the Permanent members are not sold on any of them at this stage for the top UN job.

The NY Times had indicated weeks ago that the United States planned to veto the nomination of Guyana’s candidate over her stance on Israel’s response in Gaza, which she had described as a genocide. Questioned about that recently during a broadcast interview, Ambassador Rodrigues-Birkett maintained that her statements on the issue represented the position of Guyana and the Guyana Government.

The next straw poll is set to take place next week.

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