Who will head the UN?
Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan
India's unexpected nomination of Shashi Tharoor has obviously sparked fires in the region, with neighbors Pakistan -- and Bangladesh -- scrambling to put up rivals.
While Dhaka is yet to decide, the names of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Munir Akram, Pakistan's permanent representative to the UN, did the rounds in Islamabad as possible contenders until it was announced that Pakistan would support a consensus candidate as long as it was not Tharoor.
But then, on June 26, The Nation quoted a senior Pakistani official as saying that the government had decided on fielding journalist turned diplomat Maleeha Lodhi, a two-time ambassador to the US and now high commissioner to the UK.
Dr Lodhi taught at the London School of Economics for five years after obtaining her Ph D before returning to Pakistan to edit the English language newspaper The News International (which she helped found) and earlier The Muslim for ten years, the first woman in Asia to edit a national daily newspaper.
She was Pakistan's Ambassador to the US under Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto from 1994 to 1997 and again under President Pervez Musharraf (1999 to 2002), thus becoming Pakistan's longest-ever serving ambassador to the US.
In December 1994 she was the sole Pakistani on Time magazine's list of 100 young leaders who would help define the next century.
Other names doing the rounds from Asia include former former Singapore prime minister Goh Chok Tong, former Malaysian deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim and East Timor's Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta, the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.
Former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Kemal Dervis, head of the UN Development Programme, from Turkey, are others said to be in the running.
'The key to winning the job lies in the Security Council,' explains Maxim News, a portal set up in partnership with the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund.
'A candidate needs the votes of nine Security Council members -- and no outright vetoes by any member of the Permanent Five (China, United States, Russia, Britain and France). The consensus this year is that ultimately it will largely be China (Asia's only representative among the P5) and the United States (the UN's largest financial contributor) that will decide who gets the job,' says the report.
'Any agreement between Beijing and Washington is likely to prevail among the other three members of the P5 -- and among the 10 elected members of the Security Council.'
Traditionally, the Security Council agrees on a single candidate, and forwards his name to the General Assembly, whose members than endorse the choice unanimously,' says Maxim News.
'The General Assembly is expected to confirm the choice by October.'
Photograph: Chris Kleponis/AFP/Getty Images
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